
'ho'' 



Hfe^ - ^S <<. 










Browning 
Study Programmes 

By 
Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke 



'< 'T is the poet speaks : 
But if I, too, should try and speak at times, 
Leading your love to where my love, perchance. 
Climbed earlier, found a nest before you knew — 
Why, bear with the poor climber, for love's sake ! " 

Balaustion s Ad'venture^ lines 343—347. 



New York 
Thomas Y. Crowell ^ Company 

Publishers 



TWO COPIES RECEIVED, 

Library of Co&^p«t||^ 
OfftcB of tbs 

AP^/3 mo 

K9(tl»t»f of Copyrigki^ 



61137 

Copyright, 1900 
By T. Y. Crowell & Co 



SECOND COPY. 






o / QCrO 



CONTENTS 



Page 

PREFACE xi 

GENERAL INTRODUCTION xvii 

JFirst ^ertcfi! 

POEMS OF ADVENTURE AND HEROISM . . . 1-28 

How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to 
Aix ; Through the Metidja ; Muleykeh j Donald ; 
Tray ; Herve Riel ; Incident of the French Camp ; 
Echetlos 5 Pheidippides. 

FOLK POEMS 29-41 

The Boy and the Angel 5 The Twins ; The Pied 
Piper of Hamelin ; Gold Hair : A Story of Pornic 5 
The Cardinal and the Dog; Ponte dell' Angelo, Venice; 
The Bean-Feast ; The Pope and the Net ; Muckle- 
Mouth Meg. 

PHASES OF ROMANTIC LOVE 42-81 

Garden Fancies ; The Laboratory 5 The Confessional; 
Cristina ; The Lost Mistress; A Woman's Last Word; 
Evelyn Hope ; Love among the Ruins ; A Lovers' 
Quarrel ; Two in the Campagna ; A Serenade ; One 
Way of Love, Another Way of Love; A Pretty Woman; 
In Three Days, In a Year ; Mesmerism ; The Glove ; 
In a Gondola ; A Light Woman ; The Last Ride To- 



VI CONTENTS 

PHASES OF ROMANTIC LOVE {continued) Page 

getherj Porphyria's Lover; Rudel to the Lady of 
Tripoli ; Dis Aliter Visum ; Too Late ; Confessions ; 
Youth and Ar-t ; A Likeness ; Bifurcation ; Numpho- 
leptos ; St. Martin's Summer; Solomon and Balkis ; 
Cristina and Monaldeschi ; Mary WoUstonecraft and 
Fuseli ; Adam, Lilith, and Eve ; Rosny ; Inapprehen- 
siveness ; Which ? ; Sonnet : Eyes, calm beside thee. 

A GROUP OF LOVE LYRICS 82-101 

Lyrics from " Pippa Passes" : Give her but a least 
excuse to love me ; You 'II love me yet ; Meeting at 
Night ; Parting at Morning ; Song : Nay but you who 
do not love her ; My Star ; Misconceptions ; One Way 
of Love j Love in a Life ; Life in a Love ; Natural 
Magic; Magical Nature; Prologue: Two Poets of 
Croisic; Wanting is — What?; Never the Time'and 
the Place ; Lyrics : Eagle, Melon-Seller, Shah Abbas, 
The Family, Mirab Shah, A Camel Driver, Two 
Camels, Plot Culture, A Pillar at Sebzevar ; Epilogue to 
Ferishtah's Fancies; Now; Poetics; Summum Bonum; 
A Pearl, a Girl ; Sonnet : Eyes, calm beside thee. 

PORTRAITS OF HUSBANDS AND WIVES . . 102-135 
By the Fireside ; Any Wife to Any Husband ; My 
Last Duchess ; The Flight of the Duchess ; The Statue 
and the Bust ; James Lee's Wife ; Fifine at the Fair ; 
A Forgiveness; Bad Dreams; Beatrice Signorini. 

ART AND THE ARTIST 136-167 

The Guardian Angel ; Old Pictures in Florence ; 
Pictor Ignotus ; Fra Lippo Lippi ; Andrea del Sarto ; 
The Bishop Orders his Tomb ; Deaf and Dumb ; Eury- 
dice to Orpheus ; A Face ; Pacchiarotto and How he 
Worked in Distemper ; The Lady and the Painter. 

MUSIC AND MUSICIANS 168-187 

A Toccata of Galuppi's ; Master Hugues of Saxe- 
Gotha ; Abt Vogler ; Parleyings with Charles Avison ; 
The Founder of the Feast. 



CONTENTS vii 

Page 
THE POET 188-217 

The Poet in *< Pauline ; " Memorabilia ; Popularity j 
Transcendentalism ; How it Strikes a Contemporary j 
At the " Mermaid ; " House; Shop; Touch him ne'er 
so lightly; Last Lyric in " Ferishtah's Fancies;" 
Poetics ; Album Lines ; Goldoni ; The Names. 

EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 218-252 

Saul ; Christmas-Eve ; Easter-Day ; An Epistle con- 
taining the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, 
the Arab Physician; Bishop Blougram's Apology; 
Cleon ; Rabbi Ben Ezra ; A Death in the Desert ; 
Caliban upon Setebos. 

THE PRELATE 253-262 

The Monsignor in " Pippa Passes," iv. ; The Nuncio 
in '* The Return of the Druses," v. ; Ogniben in ** A 
Soul's Tragedy," ii. ; The Bishop Orders his Tomb at 
St. Praxed's Church; Bishop Blougram's Apology; 
Abate Paul, Canon Girolamo,. the Archbishop, Capon- 
sacchi, and the Pope in **The Ring and the Book," x. ; 
The Pope and the Net ; The Bean-Feast. 



^econU Verted 

SINGLE POEM STUDIES 

Paracelsus 263 

SoROELLO 281 

Strafford 304 

PippA Passes 322 

King Victor and King Charles 332 

The Return of the Druses 338 

A Blot in the 'Scutcheon 352 

Colombe's Birthday 360 

LuRiA 370 



Viu CONTENTS 



SINGLE POEM STUDIES [continued) Page 

A Soul's Tragedy . . . „ 384 

In a Balcony 392 

Childe Roland 399 

Mr. Sludge, ** The Medium" 4.10 

The Ring and the Book 423 

Red Cotton Night-cap Country 448 

The Inn Album 455 

PORTRAYALS OF NATIONAL LIFE 

English 466-481 

Strafford ; Cavalier Tunes ; Parleying with Charles 
Avison ; Clive ; The Lost Leader ; Why I am a 
Liberal ; Jubilee Memorial Lines ; Halbert and Hob 
Ned Bratts 5 A Blot in the 'Scutcheon ; Martin Relph 
The Inn Album j Donald j Bishop Blougram's Apology 
Home Thoughts from the Sea ; Nationality in Drinks 
Home Thoughts from Abroad ; The Englishman in 
Italy j De Gustibus. 

Italian 482-496 

Sordello j Fra Lippo Lippi 5 Andrea del Sarto ; 
Pictor Ignotus ; The Bishop Orders his Tomb ; Old 
Pictures in Florence 5 Pietro of Abano ; A Gram- 
marian's Funeral ; My Last Duchess 5 The Statue and 
the Bust ; Cenciaja j Beatrice Signorini ; The Ring and 
. the Book j In a Gondola ; A Toccata of Galuppi's j 
Luria ; A Soul's Tragedy 5 King Victor and King 
Charles ; Pippa Passes ; Italian in England j De 
Gustibus. 

French 497-516 

Count Gismond • Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli 5 The 
Glove 5 The Laboratory ; Herve Riel ; Two Poets of 
Croisic 5 Incident of the French Camp ; Prince Hohen- 
stiel-Schwangau ; Gold Hair : A Legend of Pornic 5 
Respectabihty j Apparent Failure 5 Red Cotton Night- 
cap Countiy 5 Fifine at the Fair. 



CONTENTS IX 

PORTRAYALS OF NATIONAL LIFE [continued) Page 
German 517-5^4 

Fust and his Friends ; Johannes Agricola in Medita- 
tion ; Paracelsus j Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha ; Abt 
Vogler. 

Spanish 5^5-53° 

Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister ; The Confessional ; 
A Forgiveness j How it Strikes a Contemporary. 

Russian SS^-SS^ 

Ivan Ivanovitch. 

Jewish 537754^ 

Saul ; Rabbi Ben Ezra ; Holy-Cross Day 5 Filippo 

Baldinucci. 

Rabbi?j}cal Legends : — Ben Karshook's Wisdom 5 

Jochanan Hakkadosh ; Moses the Meek ; Solomon and 

Balkis ; Doctor . 

Roman 549~552^ 

" Imperante Augusto natus est — " j Protus 5 Instans 
Tyrannus 5 Pan and Luna. 

Greek 553-5^4 

Artemis Prologizes ; Ixion 5 Apollo and the Fates 5 
Pheidlppides 5 Echetlos ; Balaustion's Adventure ; 
Aristophanes' Apology. 

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL POEMS 585-594 

Development ; The Digression in " Sordello," Book 
III. ; Waring 5 The Guardian Angel ; Women and 
Roses 5 One Word More ; May and Death ; Third 
Speaker in Epilogue to "Dramatis Personae ; " Parts 
of Book Land XII., "The Ring and the Book;" 
End of "Balaustion's Adventure;" Prologue to " Fi- 
fine ; " Pacchiarotto (closing stanzas) ; Epilogue to 
" Pacchiarotto ; " La Saisiaz ; Prologue to "Jocoseria; " 
Never the Time and the Place ; Pambo j Epilogue to 
" Ferishtah's Fancies ;" To Edward Fitzgerald ; Why 
I am a Liberal ; Epilogue to " Asolando. " 



X CONTENTS 

Page 

BROWNING'S PHILOSOPHY 595-610 

Ferishtah's Fancies 5 Parleyings with Certain People 
of Importance in their Day ; Pisgah Sights j Fears and 
Scruples; Rephan ; Reverie; Christmas-Eve and Easter- 
Day ; Epilogue to " Dramatis Personae ; '' La Saisiaz. 

BROWNING'S ARTISTRY 611-626 



INDEX 627 



Prefa 



ce 



There are now, perhaps always will be, two 
camps in which many of the readers of poetry 
intrench themselves. One hedges itself about 
with walls of opposition to the study of poetry, 
maintaining that the poet is his own best inter- 
preter. The other combats the opposition, by 
slow siege as it were, not claiming, indeed, that 
the poet is not his own best interpreter, but con- 
tending constantly that other means of approach 
to him sorely need to be employed. 

The writers of this book, intended to be a 
contribution toward the building up of poetic 
appreciation, think it only fair to confess that 
they do not belong, as active combatants, to 
either of these hostile camps, for the simple 
reason that they see no sufficient cause for 
warfare. If neither camp would attempt to 
coerce the other, each could the more wisely 
follow its own bent, or — it is barely possible — 
find a firm ground of reconciliation. 

In the first camp many of the true lovers of 
poetry rally, whose aesthetic appreciation is spon- 
taneous, and whose delight in verse as an art 



xii PREFACE 

is inborn ; in the second, many of the lovers 
of poetry, for the sake of what it illumines ethi- 
cally or historically, are gathered. And with 
these who care supremely for poetry as an art 
and for its appreciation as an inborn sense ; and 
with those who care for the ethical and historical 
implications of poetry and who hold, moreover, 
that the conscious cultivation of the instinctive 
sense of verse as an art pays because it reveals 
new beauty, gives deeper pleasure, — the writers 
confess, once more, that they have no quarrel. 
Rather do they feel with the one set of dispu- 
tants the closest bonds of kinship, and with the 
ideals of the other the warmest sympathy. 

The aim they have set themselves is the 
friendly and pacific office of helping those only 
who desire such suggestions as they offer here, 
and to help them in such a way that they may 
help themselves the better to the bounty the 
poet supplies. 

This book is based, therefore, as to its general 
design, in its classifications, its " Topics," 
" Hints," and '' Queries for Discussion," on 
the gradual unfolding of the matter the poems 
contain, all or very nearly all of Browning's 
poems being woven into its plan. 

Beginning with the slighter and more obvious 
poems, and with suggestions upon them, accord- 
ingly, which are often, perhaps, more obvious 
than some readers will need, but which others, 
especially young readers or those new to 



PREFACE xiii 

Browning, may possibly require, — the pro- 
grammes proceed thence to the less simple 
poems, and follow them on with suggestions 
also growing less simple, partly by reason of the 
complex subjects, and partly because it is 
intended to help the reader less and less. Hav- 
ing learned how to go on freely in the path 
opened out to him, it is supposed that he will 
not require so many hints, but be able to pass 
on without continuous guidance, yet without 
neglecting to notice all the steps in the processes 
of poetic construction, which are pointed out 
with less detail or overleaped altogether in the 
Second Series of Programmes. 

The general order throughout is chronological, 
so far as this is consistent with the considera- 
tion, for the most part, of the easier and less 
involved poems to begin with, and conclud- 
ing with poems more complicated or admit- 
ting of wider classifications or more abstract 
generalizations. 

Discussions of m'oot-questions indirectly grow- 
ing out of the subject-matter are intended to 
follow study of the work itself, as this is the 
nucleus whence they are derived and should 
receive first attention. 

The cardinal principle of the whole plan is 
that all deductions, aesthetic, critical, ethical, 
however personal impression and point of view 
may color them, should be based on thorough 
acquaintance with what actually is in the poems. 



xiv PREFACE 

instead of on what is ofF-hand assumed to be in 
them. Most poets have suffered from such 
assumptions, repeated till they were taken for 
granted, and have thence been compelled to 
bear fault-finding and misunderstanding or praise 
and glozing, as the case might be, all equally built 
on breath. Browning has suffered peculiarly, 
and especially as an artist, from this sort of in- 
accurate observation or inattention to just what is 
in his work and just how and in what relation 
it is expressed. 

Mere analysis, it is held, is not exact observa- 
tion. Synthetic relation of all the parts of any 
work of art are necessary merely to its percep- 
tion. Neither will one or two such perceptions 
tell a straight story. Correlation of the charac- 
teristics of a poet's work and method is the 
only fit foundation for genuine appreciation or 
criticism. 

Those happily constituted persons who at a 
glance are really able to set themselves in suffi- 
ciently close accord with poets of various genius 
to get out of their work all there is in it of 
beauty and significance, are clearly best off alone. 
Who can be justified in quarrelling with their 
light-winged happiness ? 

Others, better off with helpful fellowship, are 
as clearly justified in less lonely appreciation of 
the ways of genius with mankind. And these 
may find clew, or stimulation, or merely the 
trusty staff of orderly arrangement supplied 



PREFACE XV 

them in this attempt to direct, by suggestive 
outlines, their steadfast scrutiny upon the whole 
body of Browning's work. To them the patient 
brooding of the alert and inquiring yet docile 
intelligence may be the means of opening out 
half-unsuspected traits of beauty and signifi- 
cance, — a work of art rewarding' intimate at- 
tention as a work of nature does when it yields 
up its lurking loveliness to the steady eye of 
the painter bent on discerning it in its integrity 
and symmetry. 

Boston, No'vembei' j^ i8gg. 



General Introduction 



What were life 
Did soul stand still therein, forego her strife 
Through the ambiguous Present to the goal 
Of some all-reconciling Future ? 

Parleyings : With Gerard de Lairfsse. 

The poetic motive informing Browning's work is, in 
one word, aspiration, which moulds and develops the 
varied and complex personalities of the humanity he 
depicts, as the persistent energy of the scientist, holding 
its never-wearying way, gives to the world of phenomena 
its infinite array of shows and shapes. Aspiration — a 
reaching on and upwards — is the primal energy under- 
neath that law which we call progress. Through aspi- 
ration, ideals — social, religious, artistic — are formed} 
and through it ideals perish, as it breaks away from them 
to seek more complete realizations of truth. Aspiration, 
therefore, has its negative as well as its positive side. 
While it ever urges the human soul to love and achieve- 
ment, through its very persistence the soul learns that 
the perfect flowering of its rare imaginings is not possible 
of attainment in this life. 

Assurance of the ultimate fulfilment of the ideal is one 
of the forms in which Browning unfolds the workings 
of this life principle, well illustrated in " Abt Vogler," 
who has implicit faith in his own intuitions of a final 
harmony j or in those poems where the crowning of 
aspiration in a supreme earthly love flashes upon the 
understanding a clear vision of infinite love. But by far 
b 



xviii GENERAL INTRODUCTION 

the larger number of poems discloses the underlying 
force at work in ways more subtle and obscure, through 
the conflict of good and evil, of lower with higher ideals, 
either as emphasized in great social movements. In the 
struggle between Individuals, or In struggles fought out 
on the battle-ground within every human soul. 

With a motive so all-inclusive, the whole panorama of 
human life, with its loves and hates, its strivings and 
failures, Its half-reasonings and beguiling sophistries. Is 
material ready at hand for illustration. Browning, In- 
spired with a democratic Incluslveness, allowed his choice 
In subject-matter to range through fields both new and 
old, unploughed by any poet before him. Progress, to 
be Imaged forth in Its entirety, must be Interpreted, not 
only through the Individual soul, but through the collec- 
tive soul of the human race; wherefore many phases of 
civilization and many attlrudes of mind must be detailed 
for service. There Is no choosing a subject, as a Tenny- 
son might, on the ground that It will best point the 
moral of a preconceived theory of life; on the contrary, 
every such theory is bound to be of Interest as one of the 
phenomena exhibited by the transcending principle. 

From first to last Browning portrayed life either de- 
veloping or at some crucial moment, the outcome of 
past development, or the determinative Influence for 
future growth or decay. 

His interest In the phenomena of life as a whole, freed 
him from the trammels of any literary cult. He steps 
out from under the yoke of the classicist, where only 
gods and heroes have leave to breathe ; and, equally, 
from that of the romanticist, where kings and persons of 
quality alone flourish. Wherever he found latent possi- 
bilities of character, which might be made to expand 
under the glare of his brilliant imagination, whether In 
hero, king, or knave, that being he chose to set before 
his readers as a living individuality to show whereof he 
was made, either through his own ruminations or through 
the force of circumstances. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION xix 

Upon examination it will be found that the sources, 
many and various, of Browning's subject-matter are 
broadly divisible into subjects derived from history, from 
personal experience or biography, from true incidents, 
popular legend, the classics, and from his own fertile 
imagination. Of these, history proper furnishes the 
smallest proportion. " Strafford "" and *' King Victor 
and King Charles " are his only historical dramas, and 
with " Sordello," and a few stray short poems, based on 
historical incidents and persons, exhaust his drafts upon 
history. Several more have a historical setting with fic- 
titious plot and typically historic characters, such as the 
** Return of the Druses'" and '* Luria ; ^ and still more 
have a historical atmosphere in which think and move 
creatures of his own fancy, such as <' My Last Duchess," 
"Count Gismond," '< In a Gondola."" His most im- 
portant work, " The Ring and the Book," is founded 
on the true story of a Roman murder case. Others of 
his longer poems, developed from real occurrences, are 
«' The Inn Album," ''Red Cotton Night-Cap Coun- 
try," '< Ivan Ivanovitch," and some shorter poems. The 
individual living to develop the mind stuff of the world 
rather than the individual playing a part in action, at- 
tracted Browning, and we find a large percentage of his 
subjects — between twenty and thirty poems — to be 
dramatic presentations of characters not distinguished for 
their part in the history of action, but who have played 
a part more or less prominent in the history of thought 
or art. Such are '* Paracelsus," " Saul," " Abt Vogler," 
" Fra Lippo Lippi." Sometimes they appear In the 
disguise of a name not their own, as in " Bishop Blou- 
gram," for whom Cardinal Wiseman sat, '< Prince Ho- 
henstiel-Schwangau " — Napoleon, Mr. Sludge — Home, 
the Spiritualist. <<The Pied Piper" and '< Gold Hair" 
are familiar examples of legendary subjects. Greece 
is drawn upon in the translation from the Greek of 
" Agamemnon," to which must be added *' Balaustion's 
Adventure" and "Aristophanes' Apology," both of 



XX GENERAL INTRODUCTION 

which contain transcripts from Euripides 5 also " Echet- 
los," " Pheidippides/' << Artemis Prologizes," and 
" Ixion." There should furthermore be mentioned a 
few poems which grew out of suggestions furnished by 
poetry, music, and art, as " Cenciaja," *' A Toccata 
of Galuppi's," << The Guardian Angel." And last, 
out of the pure stuif of imagination, have been fashioned 
some of his most lifelike characters. Sometimes, as al- 
ready stated, they move in an actual historical environ- 
ment, sometimes merely in an atmosphere of history, 
and sometimes, detached from time and place, is pictured 
a human soul struggling with a passion universal to 
mankind. 

This vast range of material is not by any means 
chosen by the poet at random. There are several centres 
of human thought, around which the genius of Browning 
plays with exceptional power. Such, for example, are 
the ideas symbolized in human love and service, in art, 
and in the Incarnation. 

Clustering about the instinct of human love, gathers 
thickest a maze of poems bearing witness to the force, 
sweetness, and versatility of Browning's treatment of the 
purely personal emotions. The scope sweeps from 
primitive to consummate types, as if none conceivable 
were to be tabooed, or as if Aprile's desire, the poet in 
" Paracelsus," had been Browning's own. 

" Every passion sprung from man, conceived by man, 
Would I express and clothe in its right form, 
. . . No thought which ever stirred 
A human breast should be untold ; all passions, 
All soft emotions, from the turbulent stir 
Within a heart fed with desires like mine, 
To the last comfort shutting the tired lids 
Of him who sleeps the sultry noon away 
Beneath the tent-tree by the wayside well." 

Yet the unifying current is clear through all differentia- 
tions, because it is based on the vital fact of the psychical 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION xxi 

origin of the emotion of love as desire, and capable, there- 
fore, of a never-ending tendency to impel and reveal tlie 
highest potency of each individual soul. The conditions 
under which it acts may be favorable or not, the out- 
going love may be satisfied or not, by eliciting and enjoy- 
ing love in return ; in any case, the test is equally good 
to make a soul declare itself — " to wit, by its fruit, the 
thing it does," and thus, through living out its own life, 
to recruit both the general plan of the race and its own 
individual possibilities. 

The psychical vahie, of which the commonest instinct 
towards love, in any and every human creature, is capa- 
ble, relates all men to each other, and, pointing out the 
implicit use of each to each, permits none to be scorned 
as having no part in the scheme, nor any to be denied 
the vision of some dim descried glory << ever on before.'' 
It constitutes a revelation to every man of the Infinite, 
incarnate within his own grasp and proof, — a miracle 
only to be felt, differing in this from any attempt to 
achieve the Absolute through act or deed or any product 
of effort outside oneself, one instant of human conscious- 
ness enabling the laying hold on eternity. 

Some of these poems represent the instinct of love 
astir in modes that foster the transmutation of desire into 
force, no matter what obstacles beset it ; in others ego- 
tism and conventionality chill and obstruct its saving rule, 
although its way be smooth. The merely selfish expres- 
sion of the common instinct is depicted in " The Lab- 
oratory " and "My Last Duchess;" the unselfish, 
in *' One Way of Love.'" Its seeing faculty appears in 
" Cristina " and "The Last Ride Together;" but 
its eyes are sealed until too late in " The Confessional," 
and in Constance in " In a Balcony." It finds itself 
expressed in a conventionalized way in " Numpholep- 
tos ; V in a realistic way in '* Poetics." It is revealed 
in *' Count Gismond " as a rudimentary relation between 
husband and wife ; as ripe in " By the Fireside." It is 
stifled in " Bifurcation," " The Statue and the Bust," 



xxii GENERAL INTRODUCTION 

<< Youth and Art/' " Dis Aliter Visum ; "" it is self- 
baffled in '* A Forgiveness'" and "In a Balcony j " 
but has sway despite Death in '< Prospice " and " Never 
the Time and the Place." All these separate ways of 
love are glimpses at parts of human experience, which, 
since they can be correlated, illumine the course of 
growth latent for any soul in a crisis of emotion. Other 
poems still exemplify this by correlating various stages 
of development occurring in the experience of one person, 
the original manifestation of love adding to itself a new 
psychical value, as in '* James Lee's Wife.'' 

Taken as a whole, Browning's broad and vital repre- 
sentations of love reveal the related values of different 
phases of personal experience and of each personal expe- 
rience to every other 5 and, also, the bearing of ^ach and 
all such experiences on human progress and on an ecstatic 
consciousness of the Infinite. 

In the manifestations of human energy commonly 
called social, corresponding orbits of relative values are 
brought to light by Browning through his reconstruction 
from life itself of numerous varying types of work and 
consequent service to humanity at large. The range 
exemplified includes the exercise of his art by a Fra 
Lippo Lippi, an Abt Vogler, or a Cleon, the devotion to 
his study of a Grammarian or the public achievement of 
a Pheidippides, a Herve Riel, a Pym, a Strafford, or a 
Luria. Browning shows a consciousness of the special 
influence of certain historic periods of civic enthusiasm 
on the development of social ideals. The grim right- 
eousness of Pym's London, the glories of Athens and of 
Florence, are fitly celebrated. And in the whole pioneer 
period which sowed the seed and set the shape of much 
that is not yet ripe for fulfilment in modern civilization 
— in the period of the Italian Renaissance, Browning's 
imaginative conception found frame and flesh. In <* Sor- 
dello " he described the incipient democratic tendencies 
of that period, anticipating the conclusions of its special 
historians : of Burckhardt, who characterized it as '<the 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION xxvii 

"Pauline/' was succeeded in *< Paracelsus " by an 
imaginary representation of a poet, Aprile, who, like 
Shelley, was the impersonation of spiritual love and 
human ardor. In <' Sordello " this fervent poetic type, 
which yearns to bury itself in what it worships, again 
appears. It is now contrasted and merged with a new 
self-centred type of poet which holds its own conscious- 
ness aloof from its dreams, yet finds no dream or function 
of life without as good a counterpart within itself. The 
distinction here made between what is called the sub- 
jective poet, such a one as Shelley, and the objective or 
dramatic poet, such a one as Shakespeare, recurs in the 
prose essay on Shelley, and some variety of one or the 
other or hoped-for blending of both types animates all his 
impersonations of poets. Eglamor in *' Sordello '' is a 
bardling of limited possibilities who is ennobled by his de- 
votion to his art. In " The Glove " Ronsard and Marot 
are incidentally characterized and contrasted to the advan- 
tage of the poet more deeply versed both in lore and life. 
Keats appears in " Popularity " as a poet dowering the 
world and many imitators with a beauty never seen 
before. Shelley again has a tribute of personal love in 
'* Memorabilia." Euripides and Aristophanes owe to 
Browning, in " Balaustion's Adventure'' and "Aris- 
tophanes' Apology," the deepest appreciation and 
soundest criticism they have ever received at any one 
man's hands. 

Shakespeare is directly defended, in " At the * Mer- 
maid,' " from charges of pessimism, derision of women, 
and uneasy ambition to figure in court life, — charges 
more or less involved in some modern conceptions of him 
based on an autobiographical reading of the Sonnets and 
Plays. The sonnet theory is again directly combated in 
" Honsej " and " Shop " may perhaps be taken as fall- 
ing in with these two. Both '< At the < Mermaid ' " and 
"House" rest on a conception of Shakespeare as be- 
longing altogether to the objective type of poet. And 
the Shakespeare Sonnet, '< The Names," is in accord with 



xxviii GENERAL INTRODUCTION 

a view which accepts him as the supreme dramatic 
creator. 

In the verses beginning *' Touch him ne'er so lightly," 
Browning sings the way of pain and obstacle through 
which pass the master poets who sum up great epochs of 
national life — such a poet as Dante — and who trans- 
mute the bitterness of sorrow into the splendor of song. 

Expressions concerning the philosophy of the poet's 
art and self-development are to be found in " Sordello," 
"The Ring and the Book," and the << Parleying with 
Christopher Smart." In *' Transcendentalism " and 
*< How it Strikes a Contemporary" are celebrated the 
vitality of the poet's gift, the keenness of the poet's 
sight, the warmth and humanity of his heart and office. 
The whole range of his work on poetic art is in accord 
in placing the poet somewhat less within the influence of 
the historic times to which he is related, than the artist 
or even the musician. The poet's fortune is read aright 
for more than one age, if not for all time, in his intimate 
and loving kinships with humanity, his clear outsight and 
deep insight upon the springs of life and progress, in the 
dependency of his artistic power on his truth to his own 
highest energies and aspiration. 

The most exalted ideal towards which the human soul 
aspires is that of divine love, and this, as symbolized in 
the idea of the Incarnation, Browning has presented from 
every side. Even in so humble a thinker as Caliban, the 
germ of religious aspiration is discernible in his concep- 
tion of a God above Setebos who, if not very positive in 
his possession of good qualities, is at least negative so far 
as bad ones are concerned. 

Browning's work is rich in poems which revolve about 
this central idea. In David, the intensity of his human 
love exalts his conception of God from that of power into 
that of love, and with prophetic vision he sees the future 
attainment of a religious ideal in which love like unto 
human love shall have a place. What a powerful force 
this longing is in the human mind is again illustrated in 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION xxix 

"^ 
Cleon, the cultured Greek who, despite his broad sym- 
pathies and deep appreciation of all forms of beauty, feels 
that life is not capable of affording a realization of joy 
such as the soul sees. Like Saul, an immortality of deed 
has no attractions for him 5 it is the assurance of a continu- 
ing personality that he wants. Karshish, the Arab, too, 
is haunted by the idea of a God who is love ; but neither 
in him nor in Cleon has the aspiration reached such a 
point that they are enabled to conceive of the ideal as 
actual, though living at the time of Christ. In " A 
Death in the Desert" is presented the portrait of one 
who has seen the ideal incarnate. 

Other phases of doubt and faith are pictured as affected 
by more sophisticated stages of culture. While Cleon 
and Karshish belong to a phase of development wherein 
the mind has not fully grasped the possibilities of such a 
conception, a Bishop Blougram's doubts grow out of the 
uncertainties of the nature of proof. Far from being sure, 
like David, that the incarnation will become a veritable 
truth, he can only hope that it may have been true, and 
resolve to act as if he believed it were. Still another 
phase of doubt is shown in " Ferishtah's Fancies," where 
the belief in an actual incarnation is scouted by an Oriental 
as preposterous. 

The assurance of divine love does not come to all 
of Browning's characters through a belief in external 
revelation. For instance, in the Epilogue to " Dramatis 
Personae," and in " Fears and Scruples," it is through 
the experiencing of human love alone, reaching out toward 
God, which carries the conviction that there must be a 
God of love to receive it, though he may never have 
manifested himself in the fiesh. In " Ferishtah's Fan- 
cies," again, Ferishtah, who sternly reprimands the un- 
believer already mentioned, seems to regard the ideal of 
an actual incarnation as a human conception, but, never- 
theless, doing duty as a symbol of the Divine, and thus 
helping men to approach the Infinite. 

In giving a sketch of the general motive and content 



XXX GENERAL INTRODUCTION 

of Browning's work, we have treated it as essentially 
dramatic. It Is to be noted, howes^er, that he has carried 
his observations of the realities of life into regions never 
approached by any other poet, — that Is, into the thoughts 
and motives of humanity, the very sources of world 
movements, — with the result that we do not see 
his characters in action so much as In the intellectual 
fermentation, which Is not merely the concomitant but 
the initiation of action. This fact, namely, that his 
imagination Invests the subjective side of man's life with 
vitality, sets up a certain spiritual kinship between the 
poet and his characters, and justifies the search for a 
philosophy which may be styled Browning's own ; yet, 
that any such search must be conducted with the utmost 
discretion Is evidenced by the existence of many diversi- 
ties In opinion upon this subject. It is dangerous to re- 
gard each poem as a mask from behind which Browning 
in his own person peeps forth ; for the more one studies 
his creations, the more the peculiar Indivldualisms of 
their natures assert themselves, and the more the poet 
retires Into the background. Even admitting that there 
are certain religious and philosophical Ideas upon which 
many of his dramatis persona dwell, each one presents 
them from his own point of view, and in a form of ex- 
pression suited to the particular character and circum- 
stance. Moreover, the ever-recurring Idea In new modes 
of expression is absolutely true to the life of thought in 
the world. It Is no more surprising that David, Rabbi 
Ben Ezra, the husband in *< Fifine at the Fair," and 
Paracelsus should have some points of philosophy in com- 
mon, than that the wits of Plato, Buddha, Herbert 
Spencer, and the North American Indians should occa- 
sionally jump together. We have seen how he discrimi- 
nates against no form of doubt or faith by allowing every 
shade of opinion to be presented from the standpoint of 
one who holds it. This is external evidence of his friend- 
liness toward all forms of effort that indicate a search for 
the truth. With which particular phase of truth the 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION xxxi 

poet himself is to be identified, it would be difficult to 
discover, but it is not so impossible to deduce general 
principles ; not only from the fact that aspiration is 
plainly the informing spirit of his work, but because 
from time to time this informing spirit forces itself to the 
surface in an expression avowedly the poet's own. From 
such expressions, of which the third division of the 
"Epilogue" to ** Dramatis Personae," ''Reverie'' in 
" Asolando," passages in " Paracelsus," <' Sordello," 
and *' Ferishtah's Fancies" are examples, together with 
the whole trend of his work, his philosophy, broadly 
speaking, may be described as based upon the revelation 
of divine love in every human being, through experience 
of love reaching out toward an object which shall com- 
pletely satisfy aspiration. The partial manifestations of 
love include the feeling of gratitude awakened through 
the enjoyment of benefits received, like that felt by 
Ferishtah when he eats a cherry for breakfast ; the crea- 
tive impulse, yearning to all-express itself in art 5 love 
seeking its human complement ; and love seeking expres- 
sion in service to humanity. Moral failure, resulting in 
evil ; intellectual failure, resulting in ignorance, are 
simply the necessary means for the further develop- 
ment of the soul, and the continuance of the law of 
progress. While the revelation of God is thus en- 
tirely subjective, his conception of God is both subjective 
and objective. Looking forth upon the world, he sees 
Power and Law exemplified ; looking within himself, he 
sees Power and Law manifested as Love. God, then, 
must be both Power and Love, as Rabbi Ben Ezra dis- 
covered, and with this dramatic expression may be 
paralleled the subjective expression of the same conclu- 
sion in << Reverie," — the poet's last piece of profound 
philosophizing. 

The faculty for twofold gaze within and without, on 
which Browning's reconciliation of Power and Love is 
built, has enabled him to effect a like reconciliation be- 
tween Power in Art — the ability to appropriate and project 



xxxii GENERAL INTRODUCTION 

into form large swaths of fresh and living material — and 
Love in Art — the ardor to charge and energize the whole 
with spiritual attractiveness and meaning. 

The analytic tendency, for which he is often cen- 
sured, does not control, it subserves a much more notice- 
able faculty for synthesis — for seeing and reproducing 
wholes. 

Another unusually happy balance of capabilities dis- 
tinguishes Browning. The moral interests which weight 
his work with significance are lightened with an over-play 
of humor — a product of his double vision. With what 
genial facility he enters, for example, into Baldinucci's 
simple old man's nature, and lends the poet-wit to the 
exquisite clumsiness of his joke against the Jews ; and 
then again, with what easy-going, wide-sw^eeping sym- 
pathy he enters into the complex course of law and cus- 
tom which turns the laugh on Baldinucci, after all. So, 
in this, as in many another such dramatic picture of 
poor old human nature, the moral lesson is itself made 
dramatic. 

Lend Browning but a little consideration, and the 
opulence of his effects will convince you that these two- 
fold counterpoised faculties have found way in the sort 
of art which embodies them, because that alone was large 
enough to befit them. Lyric, idyl, tale, fantasy, and 
philosophic imagining are enclosed in the all-embracing 
dramatic frar^.e. 

His artistic invention, moreover, working within the 
dramatic sphere, expended itself in perfecting a poetical 
form peculiarly his own, — the monologue. 

His monologues range from expressions of mood as 
simple as in the song, "Nay, but you, who do not love 
her," to those in which not only the complex feelings of 
the speaker are expressed, but complete pictures of a 
second and sometimes a third character are given; or 
even group? of characters as in " Fra Lippo Lippi," 
where the curious, alert Florentine guards are not all 
portrayed with equal clearness, but are all made to emerge 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION xxxiii 

effectively in a picturesque knot, showing here a hang- 
dog face, and there a twinkling eye, or a brawny arm 
elbowing a neighbor. By dexterous weaving in of allu- 
sions, flashes of light are turned upon events and feelings 
of the past, so adding harmonious depths to the general 
effect. 

His diction is noticeable in that he uses a large propor- 
tion of Saxon words, and, by so doing, gives a lifelike 
naturalness to his speech, especially in his shorter poems, 
in which his characters do not talk as if they were con- 
fined within metrical limits, but seemingly as if the un- 
stilted ways of daily life were open to them. Yet in all 
this apparently natural flow of words, there is a harmony 
of rhythm, a recurring stress of rhyme, and a condensa- 
tion of thought that produce an effect of consummate 
art, frequently enhanced by a subtle symbolism underly- 
ing the words. How simple in its mere external form is 
the little poem " Appearances '' ! Two momentary scenes, 
a few words to each, yet there have been laid bare the 
worldly, ambitious heart of one person and the true heart 
of another, disappointed by the shattering of his Idol ; 
and under all, symbolically, a universal truth. 

The obscurity with which Browning has been taxed so 
often is largely due to his monologue form. It is apt 
to be confusing at first, mainly because nothing like it 
has been met with before. The mind must be on the alert 
to catch the power of every word, to see its individual force 
and its relational force. Nothing, neither a scene nor an 
event, is described outright. Only in the course of the 
talk, references to events and scenes are made a part of 
the very warp and woof of the poem, and woven in with 
such skilfulness by the poet that the entire scene or event 
may be reconstructed by those who have eyes to see. 

A harmonizing of imagery and of rhythm and even 
rhyme with the subject in hand is a marked characteristic 
of Browning's verse. 

In the poems " Meeting at Night" and *' Parting at 
Morning,'' the wave motion of the sea is indicated in 



xxxiv GENERAL INTRODUCTION 

the form, not only by the arrangement of the rhymes to 
form a climax by bringing a couplet in the middle of the 
stanza like the crest of the wave, but the thought, also, 
gathers to a climax midway in the stanzas, and subsides 
toward their close. 

The measure of " Pheidippides " is a mixture of dactyls 
and spondees, original with the poet, with a pause at the 
end of each line, which reflects the firm-set eager purpose 
of the patriotic Greek runner and the breath-obstructed 
rhythm of his bounding flight. 

In *' James Lee's Wife,'' the metre is changed in each 
lyric to chime in with the changing mood dictating each 
one ; and the imagery is in general chosen to mate every 
aspect of the thought dominating each mood. For ex- 
ample, in the second section, called '< By the Fireside," 
the fire of shipwreck wood is the metaphor made to yield 
the mood of the brooding wife a mould which takes the 
cast of every sudden turn and cranny of her ill-forebod- 
ing reverie. 

In the grotesque, frequently double rhymes, and the 
rough rhythm of << The Flight of the Duchess," the 
bluff, blunt manner of the huntsman who tells the story 
is conveyed. The subtle change that passes over the 
spirit of the tale as the rhythm falls tranquilly, with pure 
rhymes, now, into the dreamy chant of the gypsy, is the 
more effective for the colloquial swing, stop, and start of 
the forester's gruff'-voiced diction. 

It may be said that Browning has had always m mind 
imaginary personalities, appearing in various guises and 
living under manifold circumstances, to guide him in 
fashioning his style j and seldom is his art not keyed to 
attune with the theme and motive it interprets. As an 
artist he disclaimed the nice selection and employment 
of a style in itself beautiful. As an artist, none the less, 
he chose to create in every given case a style fitly propor- 
tioned to the design, finding in that dramatic relating of 
the style to the design a more vital beauty. 



Browning Study Programmes 

Poems of Adventure and Heroism 

Page 

VoL Text Note 
"How They Brought the Good News from 

Ghent to Aix " iv 5 3^2 

''Through the Metidja " iv 8 363 

"Muleykeh" xi 183 315 

"Donald" xi 227 324 

"Tray" xi 147 306 

"HerveRiel" ix 220 302 

" Incident of the French Camp " iv 140 383 

"Echetlos" xi 166 311 

" Pheidippides " xi 117 301 

[References are to the Camberivell Broivning. T. Y. Crowell 
& Co., New York and Boston.] 

I. Topic for Papery Classwork, or Private 
Study. — The Stories of the Poems and how they 
are Told. 

Hints: — i. "How They Brought the Good 
News." Tell in a few words the gist of the story. 
For help in this see Camberwell Browning, volume 
and page cited above. 

Note that the story is told by one of the men who 

took part in the ride. How much do we learn in the 

first stanza ? Simply that the three men galloped out 

into the midnight with a ** good-speed " from the 

I 



2 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

watchman who opened the gate, and that the walls 
echoed his salute. In the second stanza we learn how 
the three men all kept abreast of each other in the ride ; 
and, more particularly, what the teller of the story 
did to make the riding easier for his horse, Roland ; 
and there is a hint of Roland's superiority indicated 
when he says that Roland galloped none the less 
steadily. What additions are made to the picture in 
the third stanza ? Not only that it had been a dark 
night, for the moon was setting when they started, 
but that the men had been galloping all night and that 
morning is now breaking ; and in the remark with which 
Joris broke their continued silence, ** Yet there is 
time," we learn that they must reach their journey's 
end before a certain hour or it will be too late. The 
fourth and fifth stanzas are devoted to a description of 
Roland as his master sees him, now the sun is up, 
through the early morning mist. In the sixth stanza, 
Dirck's horse gives out ; and in the seventh, we have 
the picture of Joris and the speaker galloping along in 
the bright sunhght, and, through Joris again, we learn 
that their destination is Aix. In the eighth, Joris*s 
roan gives out and Roland alone is left, and for the 
first time we really know that they have been galloping 
to Aix to save the city from its fate. In the ninth 
stanza, we have the last stretch of the gallop, when the 
rider does everything he can to lighten the weight for 
Roland and to encourage him, with the result that he 
reaches Aix before it is too late. In the tenth, the 
good horse Roland is rewarded by the last measure of 
wine the burgesses of Aix had, from which we may 
gather that the town was in a pretty bad way. If it 
were not for the title of this poem we should be com- 
pletely in the dark as to the purpose of the three horse- 



ADVENTURE AND HEROISM 3 

men until we reach which stanza ? And how much 
does that tell us ? 

In telling the story does the poet use many words 
that are hard to understand ? What are they, and 
where do they occur ? 

Where are the towns which are mentioned in the 
ride ? 

(For answers to these questions see Camberwel 
Brow?nngy Vol. IV., p. 362.) 

Queries for Discussion. — Would the poem bt; 
any more interesting if we knew exactly what the 
news was and what fate it saved Aix from ? What 
do you think makes it so interesting ? 

Would it have been possible for a horse to gallop 
as many miles as Browning represents Roland as doing ? 

Do the little inaccuracies of the poet spoil the effect 
of the poem ? 

Hints : — 2. " Through the Metidja." What does 
this poem describe ? (See Camberwell Browning, 
Vol. IV., p. 363.) 

Is this ride shared by as many riders as that of the 
preceding poem ? How is its story told ? Notice 
that a series of events do not happen as in the first 
poem. The story this lonely rider has to make known 
to us is largely that of the emotions arising within him ; 
but is it only that ? From the first stanza we learn 
that he is trusting to his own heart to guide him 
somewhere. Swayed by his excited feelings, his 
scrutiny of some one in whom the tribe he belongs to 
are confiding is doubly keen, that is, he looks both 
with the eyes of sense and of insight, ** as I were 
double-eyed." From what is said in the second 
stanza it comes out that this some one is their chief, 
who has allied forces under him, and that it is to him 



4 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

the rider is speeding. We thus learn sympathetically 
from the Arab rider himself the information given in 
the title. His fierce loyalty to his chief appears, also, 
in this stanza through the defiant pride which makes 
him ask, if witnesses are denied him in the empty 
desert. This strange question excites not only our 
curiosity, but our sense of something uncanny. In 
the third stanza we gather from his mention of an 
** inner voice," that these witnesses are creatures of his 
fancy, whom the sliding sands seem to disclose, and 
then, also, that they are dead men, *' homicides," 
who come boasting to the desert,, only to perish there. 
What do you think is meant by ** homicides " ? 
You guess that these are soldiers who come expecting 
to kill the Arabs, and who are themselves killed. 
What do you think of the rider's scornful question, 
** Has he lied ? " Does this seem to imply that the 
chief to whom the rider is so loyal rests under some 
suspicion with the other Arabs, and that these ** homi- 
cides " themselves had underestimated his strength 
and craft as a leader of these desert tribes ? Do you 
think this broken and mysterious way of expressing 
himself natural and life-like, but a mistake because it 
leaves the story obscure ? Or does it lead us to get 
at this story better because we have to enter into the 
feehng of this desperate man to understand it ? In 
the fourth stanza he turns away from his own sensa- 
tions to describe his horse. What does he say of him } 
What kind of a foot has a zebra ? Is the thigh of an 
ostrich strong ? How does this stanza increase the 
impression of hot haste and excitement ? In the last 
stanza the sense of adventure and risk, and of the 
intense tribal feeling of the rider is brought to a climax. 
How is this done ? By his mention of fate, and his 



ADVENTURE AND HEROISM 5 

religion, and the blind faith that urges him to this ride, 
even if it be to death. We seem to learn the story of 
this ride the best through learning the most of the rider. 
Since he declares himself ready to die when the Prophet 
and the Bride stop the blood swelling his veins so fiercely, 
we learn that his ride is taken in the face of great risks, 
with almost certain death in the end. Who are the 
Prophet and the Bride ? (See Camberwell Brownings 
Vol. IV., p. 364.) 

Queries for Discussion. — Is the ride described in 
this poem less thrilling than that of the first ? Or 
more so, because you learn from it more of the rider 
and less of the horse ? Is it necessarily true that a 
more psychological view of an adventure is less inter- 
esting than an external view ? 

Hints: — 3. " Muleykeh." What in a few 
words is the story of this poem ? (See Camberwell 
Brownings Vol. XL, p. 315.) In the first four 
stanzas we are introduced to the wonderful mare 
Muleykeh and her master through the conversation of 
a stranger to Hoseyn and a friend. Notice the im- 
pression a stranger would get of Hoseyn from the 
poor look of his tent and" what the friend would 
reply to show that he needed neither pity nor scorn. 
What does he represent Hoseyn as ** laughing in his 
soul," — that is, as thinking in a laughing mood? 
What is his friend's opinion of his attitude ? Who 
does the stranger decide to lavish his pity upon in the 
fourth stanza, and why ? In the fifth stanza the poet 
takes up the story of Duhl's attempts to get the coveted 
prize, Muleykeh. How does Hoseyn treat Duhl's 
offer to buy her in the sixth stanza? To Duhl's 
second attempt a year later to get Muleykeh by begging 
her for his son, what is Hosevn's answer ? When 



6 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

after another year Duhl attempts to steal the Pearl, 
what excuses does he make for his action ? To what 
does Duhl refer in lines 58 and 59 ? He means to 
point out that Hoseyn was so generous that he had 
killed one of his horses to feast a chance-comer and had 
given his robe to two poor singing girls, and knowing 
this he had ventured to play upon his generosity when 
he begged the Pearl from him. In line 65 it appears 
that he had sent a spy beforehand to find out where 
the Pearl was kept. What picture does he give us of 
Hoseyn and his mare as he found them ? And of 
Buheyseh her sister ? Describe the incidents of the 
theft and the pursuit which followed. Describe the 
last view we get of Hoseyn. 

Queries for Discussion. — If Hoseyn had been rep- 
resented as resisting the temptation to prove Muley- 
keh's unrivalled swiftness it would have made the 
mare the centre of the poem, would it not, instead 
of her master ? Is the poem made the more in- 
teresting through Hoseyn' s inner struggle being brought 
out, or less so ? 

Hints : — 4. *' Donald." Give a summary, briefly, 
of the story. (See Camherzvell Brozuning, Notes, Vol. 
XI., p. 324.) Who is the speaker of the first two 
lines of the poem, and to whom are they addressed, 
the reader, or " the boys from Oxford "? To whom 
is this explanation addressed, about the boys, where 
they were from, and how young they were ? The 
scene of the poem and an account of what " the boys ' ' 
were talking about is the theme of the following 
stanzas leading up to the story of Donald. How many 
of the stanzas are taken up with this preparatory frame- 
work for the story, and where does the actual story 
itself begin? Notice that this preparatory setting of 



ADVENTURE AND HEROISM 7 

the story is not merely descriptive, but descriptive in 
a dramatic way of the scene and the mood and talk 
both of the boys and the story-teller. How much is 
made known in this way of the scene inside the bothie? 
What are the boys doing, and how does their opinion 
of the value of "Sport" to a man differ from the 
story-teller's? But does the teller of the story say 
what he thinks about ** Sport"? What is his opinion, 
do you think, and how do you know? Is Donald's 
story (lines 61— 224) really **just what he told us 
himself" or the story-teller's version of it? Notice 
how many stanzas are devoted to putting before the 
eye the precise scene where Donald's adventure was 
to take place, before Donald himself is mentioned. 
This picturesque manner of description belongs to the 
story throughout ; but observe that the interest inten- 
sifies at the climax of the meeting with the stag (lines 
144-168). Is this due merely to the excitement and 
suspense at this point, or, also, to the poet's way of 
telling about it ? Notice that the descriptive style 
changes to direct presentation, first, of Donald's 
idea of the way out of the situation (lines 144 and 
152), expressed dramadcally, just as Donald himself 
thinks it and says it; and second, by the stag's ex- 
pression, not, of course, in words, but by action, of 
his understanding of what to do. The story-teller 
drops the past tense here, and speaks in the present 
tense, as if the events described were at that moment 
taking place, reverting to the past tense again with the 
return to his own feelings about Donald's act (lines 
185—189). Show how the description he gives of 
Donald's crippled state, and how the fellow made his 
living afterwards is again enlivened by the dramatic 
style, in giving the comment of different people on 



8 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Donald's adventure, including his own. Why does 
he himself hope he gave twice as much as the rest? 

Is the quotation from Homer appropriately put in 
the mouth of the story-teller? Why ? Notice what 
one of *' the boys " says (Hne 43). What does the 
story-teller mean, in lines 185—189, by saying he will 
dare to place himself by God ? — that he will venture 
to judge as God ? To whom does he apply the 
** plain words" he hears? What allusions in the 
poem reveal the place in Great Britain where the 
story takes place? What is a ^'bothie?" Was 
their iire made of coal or wood ? (See Hne 9.) 
"The trivet," " Glenlivet." (See Camberwell 
Brow?iing,Vo\. XL, p. 324.) The speaker seems to 
be satirical about there not having been any boasting ; or 
are five score brace of grouse just enough to fill a game 
bag? *« Ten hours' stalk of the Royal" (line 16). 
Why would this be an unheard-of feat ? What dif- 
ferent class of feats has the speaker succeeded in ? 
Explain a " Double-First," line 42. Where is 
Ross-shire ? Some of the characteristics of the coun- 
try are mentioned in a single line (76). What are 
these ? What other words indicating the country are 
there in this poem? (See lines 79, 103, 107.) 
What is the difference between a ** red deer" and a 
"fallow deer ? " What is the " pastern " (line 182)? 
There are two references to books in this poem. 
Which are they ? 

Queries for Discussion. — Is this poem a good argu- 
ment against Sport ? Is Donald's act only that of an 
exceptionally unfeeling and ungenerous sportsman, do 
you think, or is Walter Scott right in saying what he 
does about it? (Scott's opinion is given in notes to 
the poem already cited.) 



ADVENTURE AND HEROISM 9 

Hints: — 5. ** Tray." Give a summed-up ac- 
count, (See Camberwell Brownings Vol. XI., 
p. 306.) As a little introduction to the story of this 
poem, notice that some one is represented as asking 
three bards for a tale which will satisfy his thirst of 
soul. He interrupts the first and the second bard, but 
decides to hear the third bard's tale of a beggar child. 
Notice how this third bard tells the story pardy in 
narrative form and partly in dramatic form. Point out 
where these changes in the manner of telling occur and 
notice that the transition from one to the other is 
made directly without any intermediate ** they sai^d " 
or *< he says." Is there any exception to this \ What 
are the only aspects of the situation that appeal to the 
bystanders ? Do you get the impression that the poet 
who tells the story is in sympathy with the dog rather 
than with the bystanders ? What is there in the man- 
ner of telling the story that gives you this impression ? 

What unusual words are there in the poem ? For 
''eke" and ** habergeon " see Notes, Camberwell 
Browningy Vol. XL, p. 306. Is '* helm " an un- 
usual word for helmet ? By vivisection is meant the 
experimenting upon animals while still alive, so that 
their physical conditions and nervous action may be 
observed and knowledge gained thereby to be used in 
the surgical and medical treatment of human beings. 
This results, of course, in torture to the animal; and 
Browning was one of those who thought that any gains 
won by such means cost too much pain to the animal, 
resulted in a dulling of human kindliness, and, in this 
case, was grossly stupid because useless. Is any especial 
hero referred to in Sir Olaf ? Browning may have had 
in mind King Olaf II. of Norway, called St. Olaf, who 
was very energetic in spreading Christianity throughout 



lo BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

his kingdom, and was driven from his throne by Canute 
in 1030. Or he may simply have used the name to 
stand as a type of the medieval Christian Knight of 
Chivalry. 

Is there anything in the poem to indicate where 
the incident occurred ? The only indication is in the 
word **quay," which points to Paris because there 
are quays (or quais) along the banks of the Seine 
where little beggar girls might sit. On the other 
hand. Tray is a good old English name for a dog, 
used by Shakespeare in " Lear," iii. 6, 65. As the 
incident really occurred in Paris (see notes before 
cited) Browning probably thought of the setting as 
there, while in every other particular he made the 
poem English. 

Query for Discussion. — Is this poem chiefly 
interesting because of its graphic description of a pic- 
turesque event, or because of its pointing a moral 
against vivisection and against that type of scientist which 
thinks by external experiment to find out all the 
secrets of the inner nature ? 

Hints: — 6. ** Herve Riel." The gist of this 
story may be given in a {t\N words (see Camber- 
zvell Brozvning, Vol. IX., p. 302), but it is to be 
noticed that only by giving some idea of how this 
story is told, can any notion be gained of the risk and 
excitement attending this adventure of piloting the 
French ships into the harbor and saving them from the 
pursuing English fleet. Show how this patriotic ad- 
venture is told. In the first stanza, what image gives 
you a picture of the whole situation ? What further 
knowledge of it do you gain from the second stanza? 
The desperateness of the situation is shown how, in 
the third stanza ? By direct description } How, 



ADVENTURE AND HEROISM II 

then ? Hew are the council and its decision described 
in stanza iv., dramatically or narratively? The 
next stanza introduces the deliverer from a peril not 
only made known but accepted as hopeless. A gleam 
of escape dawns with his appearance. How do you 
get this impression ? Nothing definite comes out as 
to the way of escape, but only that there is one, ac- 
cording to this ''simple Breton sailor," until line 60 
of stanza vi. Up to that point, however, how does 
the story get on ? The way of escape is only hinted 
at, but the patriotism and ability and character of the 
deliverer are made clear, and with the close of the 
stanza you not only know what the way out is going 
to be, but you have a glowing sense of the capacity of 
Herve to accomplish it. What makes you draw these 
conclusions as to, first, his character, second, his 
patriotism, third, his ability ? Notice that in stanza 
vi. Herve is made to speak for himself directly. 
Does he boast? Is he right, then, in speaking so con- 
fidently of himself and so bitterly of the other pilots ? 
What do you think ? 

Look up on the map the geographical and local 
allusions in this poem, and explain their use here. 
(See Camberwell Browning) Vol. XL, Notes, p. 303.) 
Which is the biggest ship ? Notice that this is the 
flagship of Admiral Damfreville, and is spoken of as 
having ** twelve and eighty guns." Is this an Eng- 
lish or a French way of counting ? ( Quatre-z'ingt- 
douze.^ What does Browning mean by the " rank- 
on-rank " of ** heroes flung pell-mell on the Louvre, 
face and flank " ? 

Queries for Discussion. — Does the interest of the 
poem end with the end of the adventure ? Notice 
that if it did, stanza vii., which describes how the ships 



12 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

entered the harbor safely and how Herve proved his 
word, would properly end the poem, and all that comes 
after it would be superfluous. Is it ? If you think it 
is not, say why, and show what interests you in the 
following stanzas, and how it is all made known. 
Notice, as a sign that the hero of this adventure is 
more important than the adventure itself, graphic and 
exciting as that is, that the title of the poem is ** Herve 
Riel," and not ** How Herve Riel Steered the Ships 
into Harbor." Why is that sort of a title the right 
one for *' How they Brought the Good News," while 
the other suits this } 

Hi?its : — 7. ** Echetlos ? " (For account of the 
poem see Camberwell Browni?tg, Vol. XI., Notes, p. 

This is a very simple and direct narrative. Two 
stanzas are occupied with a general description of the 
battle of Marathon. In the third stanza one man is 
singled out for special description. What point 
about him is noted first ? In the fourth stanza a de- 
scription of this man's appearance is given. How is 
he then described as helping the Greeks. What be- 
came of him when the battle was over and what did 
the Oracle say about it ? The final stanza gives a 
reflection made by the poet, himself, upon the last 
words of the Oracle, 1. 27, — " The great deed ne'er 
grows small," namely, that the great name too often 
does, as illustrated in 'the case of what distinguished 
Athenians ? 

Are any unusual words used in this poem ? A 
" share," 1. 12, is the broad blade of the plough that 
cuts the ground. "Tunnies," 1. 13, are fish belong- 
ing to the mackerel family, but somewhat different in 
form and much larger than the ordinary mackerel. 



ADVENTURE AND HEROISM 13 

Those found in the Mediterranean sometimes weigh 
1,000 pounds. "Phalanx," 1. 16 : In early Greek 
times a body of soldiers formed in a square, in close 
rank and file with their shields joined and their pikes 
crossing each other. ( For an account of Greek Oracles, 
line 25, see Smith's *' History of Greece.") 

Queries for Discussion. — Is the attitude of a genu- 
ine hero rightly to make light of honor due him as the 
doer of a great deed ? And is it necessarily a mis- 
take, as this poem suggests, for the public to honor the 
doer of a deed, instead of the deed itself.? Why.? Is 
it right for a country to show its gratitude substantially 
to its heroes ; but wrong for the heroes to accept too 
much? Or what is the right principle to follow, and 
what are the limitations that ought to govern a state's 
expression of honor to its heroes .? 

Hints: — 8. "Incident of the French Camp." 
Does Browning himself tell this story, or does he 
assume that a Frenchman tells it } How do you 
know ? What picture do you get of Napoleon in the 
first stanza \ What sense is there in giving his thoughts 
in the second stanza? Have they anything to do with 
the incident t What is the incident } Notice how it 
is told — a rider gallops up, alights, tells news which 
it takes the greatest nerve for him to stand up long 
enough to give. How is this made known to you } 
When he has delivered his message what effect does it 
have upon the Emperor which reveals the connection 
between his thoughts and such an incident ? The last 
stanza adds to the effect of the story by showing that 
not even to the Emperor are his plans so important as 
to make him ignore this young soldier's sacrifice of 
his life for them. 

Queries for Discussion. — In what does the climax 



14 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

of effect in this poem consist ? In its portrayal of love 
of country, the glory of France, the character of 
Napoleon, or the devotion of the youth ? 

Hints : — 9. ** Pheidippides." Give first a sketch 
of the story. (See Camberwell Brownings Vol. XI., 
Notes, page 301.) 

Do you get any idea from the first stanza as to the 
scene of the poem or who is speaking ? All that is 
evident is that some one is paying reverence to his 
country and his gods, and especially to Pan, as a 
savior and patron. In the eighth line it appears that 
this person is addressing the Archons of Athens, stand- 
ing alive before them, and in the eleventh we learn, 
by his repeating the order he had received from the 
Archons, who he was, and what he was ordered to 
do. From the way in which he describes his run to 
Athens, his breaking in upon the Spartans, and his 
feelings at the actions of the Spartans, should you say 
that this professional runner had the soul of a patriot t 
Observe (line 41) how he describes himself as saved 
from mouldering to ash only by the word ** Athens '* 
in Sparta's reply. What further effect does Sparta's 
perfidy have upon him ? He even accuses the gods of 
his land of bad faith. To what will he give his al- 
legiance in preference to them ? Is his meeting with 
Pan the chief event of the poem \ How does he say 
the god looked and spoke, and what does Pan give 
him as a pledge that he will help Athens ? What 
further qualities of his character come out when 
Miltiades questions him as to the reward he is to re- 
ceive himself? First his modesty in not relating what 
Pan had said of himself, and then his singleness of 
purpose in being satisfied with a reward that simply 
promised him release from the runner's toil. Observe 



ADVENTURE AND HEROISM 15 

the picture he draws of what he means to do after the 
Persians have been conquered. What actually hap- 
pened to him after the battle of Marathon, showing 
that Pan had in mind a different sort of release from 
his toil from that Pheidippides had imagined ? 

Give an account of the Greek gods and goddesses 
mentioned in the poem. (See notes before cited. 
For further information, see Gayley's '* Mythology in 
English Literature " or Smith's " Dictionary of 
Classical Mythology.") Which was the special 
tutelary deity of Athens ? Give an account of the 
customs and superstitions mentioned. 

Queries for Discussion. — If you had no other 
means of judging than this poem supplies, what should 
you say, from the character of Pheidippides, were the 
main characteristics of a patriot ? Does it detract from 
the loyalty of Pheidippides at all that he does not take 
it in that the meed of his services will be death } 
What is the inner appropriateness to the theme of Pan, 
the rude earth-god being the best friend of Athens ? 
Does it mean that to the crude primal instinct of at- 
tachment to the earth where one was born Athens owes 
her salvation ? Is patriotism, because it is an elemen- 
tary sentiment, Hkely to wane with the progress of 
civilization ? Or is it capable of development, and 
how, do you think, ought it to be developed ? — So 
that a Sparta may be concerned in the welfare of an 
Athens ? 

II. Topic for Papery Classzvorky or Private Study. 
— Why, and How the Deed Was Done. 

Hints : — If you look through these poems you may 
see that in all of them, except ''Donald," some risky 
act is undertaken that contributes to the general good. 

The sportsman in '* Donald " is seized with a sudden 



l6 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

desire to wreak his pleasure on the stag, at an oppor- 
tune moment, and no other considerations have any 
force beside that merely selfish instinct. A critical 
instant comes and a risk to run presents itself to the 
mind of Donald as to all the other actors in these 
poems, but Donald alone runs the risk and does his 
deed without some kindly or social impulse in view. 

In " Muleykeh ** Hoseyn is seized, at the opportune 
chance when his mare is within his reach, with the 
disinterested impulse, arising from his love and pride 
in her, which makes him act directly against his more 
selfish caution as her owner. But in this poem, as in 
** Donald," the story told is of an exciting event with 
an element of chance in it. 

It may be said that these are poems of adventure 
therefore ; but are they poems of equal heroism ,? And 
if one has more of the heroic in it than the other, 
which do you think it is, and how does it come out ? 
In drawing your conclusions compare with the other 
poems and ask how it is with these, also. 

Because all are stories of exciting events with an 
element of chance, and lead to a risk willingly under- 
taken for the sake of some end the actors think good 
for others, are they, therefore, all equally heroic ? 
Notice the way the deeds were done and what they 
were done for in each case. 

In **How They Brought the Good News," and 
''Through the Metidja," the object held in view by 
the riders is left a little vague. Still it is evident that 
the ride has, in both cases, a patriotic motive ; but is 
the peril equal ? What risk does the Arab rider run .? 
And ask, in comparison with his, what the risk is for 
Dirck and Joris and Roland's rider ; and who the real 
hero is who pays the price for the race to bring good 



ADVENTURE AND HEROISM 17 

news to Aix. In each of the three horse-poems the 
horses share differently in the result ; show how. In 
how many of these poems are human beings alone 
concerned in the deed done, and in which is the human 
interest the least important ? 

In ** Herve Riel," why the deed was done is as 
definite as the how. In **Echetlos" the why 
is implied. In the "Incident of a French Camp," is 
the way in which the young hero bears himself more 
important to the reader than what he does ? Is it the 
glory of France or devotion to his chief which inspires 
him ? 

Compare the different heroes in the different poems : 
(i) as to whether they risk life or not, (2) whether 
the ends they seek are equally valuable, (3) whether 
they look for reward or not. Do you admire Herve 
Riel more as Browning represents him, asking but for 
one day's leave, than as history records him, asking for 
a hfelong furlough ? (See Vol. IX., Notes, p. 302.) 

In thinking over the situations presented in the re- 
maining poems ask yourself in which the kindly mo- 
tive — the desire to meet a personal risk for a social 
good is the most mixed with the necessity to do harm 
to some in order to do good to others ? 

In "Herve Riel," for example, the salvation of 
the French fleet is an annoyance and chagrin to the 
English, and in ** Pheidippides " and ** Echetlos " 
the heroism that helps the Athenians spites the Spartans 
and scatters the Persians, while the service done the 
Emperor and the glory won for France in planting the 
French colors in Ratisbon, however glorious and good 
from the French point of view, is disastrously meant 
for the German people. But in "Herve Riel" is 
the benevolence accomplished for the French fraught 



l8 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

with as much malevolence to the English as the heroism 
of the French youth in the ** Incident of the French 
Camp" is to the German city ? It might be said, 
from an unpartisan point of view, that an act of heroism 
in war is sometimes nobler, because more justifiable, 
under some circumstances than others. 

Are all these poems written from a partisan point of 
view ? — that is, is the way of looking at the deed 
Athenian in ** Pheidippides " and French in the French 
poems, or are there any indications that the deed itself 
is more enthusiastically dwelt upon in "Herve Riel," 
and the characters of the Youth and the Emperor, 
rather more than the deed alone, in the ** Incident of 
the French Camp ? " 

Queries for Discussion. — Does the blind uncon- 
sciousness of their deeds on the part of Roland and 
Tray make them less or more heroic in your opinion 
than Herve, Pheidippides, the French boy, or the 
Greek peasant ? Are such acts finer in proportion to 
the unconsciousness of risk, or to the regardlessness of 
risk ? Is the human being capable, therefore, of 
greater possibilities of heroism and cowardice because he 
is aware of the peril and understands better what end 
he seeks to accomplish ? 

Is the service done by a Herve Riel in rescuing his 
country's navy from destruction more exalting because 
it is a deed that saves life than that of the French 
youth who helps his emperor in aggressive action 
against life ? Should you say that an act of heroism 
appealing to the universal heart was necessarily more 
impressive than one making a partisan appeal or not ? 

In estimating the value of heroism in thrilling the 
spirit, is why the deed is done more important than 
how it is done ? In the poet's art of telling a story 



ADVENTURE AND HEROISM 19 

effectively, it might depend more on the way of telling 
it, and on whether the poet meant to lay his emphasis on 
the character of the actors, or on the quality of their 
heroism. 

III. Topic for Paper, Classzuork, or Private 
Study. — The Historical Background. 

Hints : — In considering what historical background 
these poems have, the stories they tell or the imagi- 
nation or skill of the poet in telling them may be put 
aside, and the elements of actual life-experience out of 
which the poems were made remain to be kept in 
view. It may then be seen that these foundation- 
elements of life-experience are of several kinds. There 
may be some historical event or occurrences belonging 
to the social life of man out of which the poem arose ; 
or there may be some other poem or story or tradition 
on which this one is founded, in which case, social 
life or the general human experience is still the source 
of the poem, but pushed a step farther back ; or, there 
may be, at the root of it, some experience of life be- 
longing to a single person. The first is what is com- 
monly understood to be the historical source ; the 
second, the literary ; the third is ordinarily spoken of 
as biographical. But all are alike traceable to that 
prior experience of life which may be called, broadly 
speaking, the historical background. Bearing this in 
mind, we may find some interesting differences in the 
kind of historical background these poems have. Ask- 
ing now, for example, what foundation in history 
there was for ** How they brought the Good News," 
we find, first, that Browning denied any exact basis for 
the particular occurrence told (see what he says in notes 
to the poem in the Camberwell Browning, Vol. IV., 
p. 362), and yet that the story is connected not merely 



20 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

with two real cities but with a very interesting chapter 
in the history of modern Europe ; and that this inci- 
dent, which Browning imagined, is a probable one 
which might easily have been a real one, arising out of 
the siege of Aix and the union of Ghent with Aix to 
resist the despotic control of Spain ; and that all this, 
although it does not enter directly into the story of 
the poem, makes a sort of framework for it. If you 
like to know what the alliance of Holland and the other 
States of the Netherlands against Philip II. meant in 
modern history, and what it accomplished, turn to 
Motley's ** Rise of the Dutch Republic," chapter viii. 
To the historic framework surrounding this little poem 
we owe thus a picturesque side-light. But you will see 
that the poem does not celebrate this historical line of 
events. It is the carrying of the good news, and not 
the news itself or its effects, which is the main thing 
here. What Browning says about the origin of this 
poem, too (see notes cited), assures us that he has 
made more use of life in the shape of his own personal 
experience in riding " York," than he has of life in 
the shape of historical or social experience. Still, this 
personal experience could scarcely be called autobio- 
graphical as it stands in the poem, here. It is to be 
noticed that although he has made more use of one 
than the other, he has made use both of personal and 
historical life in the same way, — that is, indirectly. 

In "Through the Metidja " there is scarcely 
even an indirect use of personal experience ; but this 
poem more distinctly, but still indirectly, makes use 
of social experience. It involves another interesting 
bit of historical life, still more modern, belonging to 
the present century and connected with a class of 
events still taking place, the subjugation, by the 



ADVENTURE AND HEROISM 21 

stronger and more civilized nations, of the weaker and 
less developed races. In this case it is the coloniza- 
tion of Algeria by France which led to the repeated 
uprisings of the wild Arab tribes of this part of North 
Africa, led by their able and noble chieftain Abd-el- 
Kadr, against the French invaders of their country.- 
(See Camberwell Browningy Notes, Vol. IV., p. 363, 
for the dates and the main events in Abd-el-Kadr's 
career.) Notice how indefinitely, and yet pictur- 
esquely Browning has used this historical background, 
what allusions to the events of the Algerian revolt, 
to the Arab character, customs, and religion he has 
woven into the poem, and the atmosphere of sympathy 
with which he has surrounded this desperately loyal 
subject of the Arab chief 

In comparison with these two poems what sort of 
historical background may the other horse-poem, 
*' Muleykeh," the two other animal-poems, ** Don- 
ald," and **Tray" and the four remaining war- 
incident poems be said to have ? Should you say that 
the sort of historical element underlying the first two 
poems was of that sub-class of literary source which 
rests on a folk-story or some such traditional tale ? Can 
you judge what sort of literary source a story has, even 
if you do not know just what the original of that par- 
ticular story was ? How does the incident from which 
**Tray" arose (see notes to that poem, Camberwell 
Browning, Vol. XT., p. 306), differ from the older tra- 
ditional tale of ''^Donald" and the still older one of 
** Muleykeh," or the ancient classic stories of ** Echet- 
los " and ** Pheidippides ? " (See notes, Camberwell 
Browningy for information as to these.) Show in each 
case what use the poet has made of the historical ele- 
ment ; how he has enlivened and enriched it, and made 



22 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

it savor of its original country and nationality ; and to 
what end he has adapted it. Are the later poems of 
this series more complex in their historical, racial, or 
moral interest, than the earlier ones ? Bring this out 
more fully. 

(Queries for Discussion. — Does the actual occurrence 
of any incident told of in a poem make it more vivid 
and interesting or not ? Give the reasons in favor of 
historical accuracy on the one side, and the superiority 
of fact over fancy ; and then, on the other side, bring 
out all that may be said in favor of the literary use of 
history, and the truth to life that may be attained by 
an artistic use of the imagination ; and then ask which 
gives you the truer view of life, history or literature ? 

Is the direct way of relating historical or personal 
events any more effective or lifehke than the indirect? 
Or does that question also depend upon the manipula- 
tion and the point of view ? Give examples of the 
direct and indirect. Are any of this series of poems 
directly told? Is ** Donald " an example of direct 
relation, or does it only assume to be an experience of 
the poet's own in story-telling in a Highland bothie ? 

IV. Topic for Papery Classwork, or Private Study. 
— The Artistry of the Poems. 

[We use this word, ** artistry," because it is used 
by Browning in ** The Ring and the Book " to de- 
note the fashioning of the poem out of the raw material 
of fact or thought and is more appropriate because 
more special than the word ** art."] 

Hi?tts : — Concerning the rhythm of ** How They 
Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix," Joa- 
quin Miller tells this interesting little anecdote. He 
had been invited by the Archbishop of Dublin to meet 
Browning, Dean Stanley, Houghton, and others. 



ADVENTURE AND HEROISM 23 

*' Two of the archbishop's beautiful daughters had 
been riding in the park with the Earl of Aberdeen. 
'And did you gallop?' asked Browning of the 
younger beauty. * I galloped, Joyce [Dirck] gal- 
loped, we galloped all three.' Then we all laughed 
at the happy and hearty retort, and Browning, beating 
the time and clang of galloping horses' feet on the 
table with his fingers, repeated the exact measure in 
Latin from Virgil ; and the archbishop laughingly 
took it up, in Latin, where he left off. I then told 
Browning I had an order — it was my first — for a 
poem, from the Oxford Magazine, and would like to 
borrow the measure and spirit of his * Good News ' 
for a prairie fire on the plains, driving buffalo and all 
other life before it into the river. *Why not borrow 
from Virgil as I did ? He is as rich as one of your 
gold mines, while I am but a poor scribe.' " The Hne 
Browning quoted from Virgil was probably the cele- 
brated one descriptive of galloping horses : '* Quadru- 
pedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum.^'* Notice, 
however, that Browning has adapted this metre to suit 
himself. Instead of making Virgil's line of dactylic feet 
(one accented and two unaccented syllables) ending 
with a spondee, he begins his lines always with one or 
two extra unaccented syllables, and always ends the line 
with an extra accented syllable. By some, this poem is 
scanned as anapaestic (two syllables unaccented and one 
accented) ending with an iamb and sometimes beginning 
with an iamb (an unaccented and an accented syllable.) 
But we think it will be found that a delicate percep- 
tion of sound will dictate the scanning of the poem as 
dactylic, even if we had not Browning's word for it 
that he borrowed the rhythm of it from Virgil. In 
reading the poem one feels that to a certain extent it 



24 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

imitates the gallop of horses. Is this entirely due to 
the dactylic measure ? If this were so, then dactyls 
would always suggest galloping horses. (Compare 
the metre of Longfellow's ** Evangeline.") The 
suggestion is probably gained more definitely through 
the regular recurrence of the final accented syllable to 
every line by means of which the sharp and regular 
rhythm of a gallop is conveyed. The rhyming 
couplets also add to the rhythmic regularity : Is an 
atmosphere of haste given to the poem by the direct 
way in which the story is told ? 

Where are there any examples of poetic ornament, 
and what are they ? (See lines 4, 5, 15, 19, 24, 
39, 40, 41, 47.) Are there any allusions in the 
poem which do not naturally grow out of the subject, 
like the references to the places they passed on their 
ride ? 

** Through the Metidja " also suggests the swift pace 
of a horse, but the effect is gained in a very different 
way. The first thing you will notice about this poem 
is that it has but one rhyme sound all through, and 
that only one word, ** ride," is repeated; further, 
beside the end rhymes, there are a number of internal 
rhymes. Contrast the rhythm of this poem with that 
of the preceding poem and notice that it is anapaestic 
with two feet in each line for the greater part of the 
poem, but that some of the lines are longer, having 
three feet, one anapaestic, and two iambic. Point 
out these longer lines. Miss Ethel Davis, writing in 
Poet-lore (August-September, 1893, Vol. V, p. 436), 
says of this poem : ** On the first reading of* Through 
the Metidja,' the twinship of form and matter is per- 
haps the most strongly marked. One hears in the 
opening verse no word to picture the horse that car- 



ADVENTURE AND HEROISM 25 

ries the speaker, but at once he becomes the central 
figure of the poem. His beating hoofs exhilarate, and 
the fresh, clear air animates, in spite of hnes which in 
themselves would surround the rider with dust and 
heat. The man himself would be forgotten but for 
the added length of the sixth line. In that the motion 
of the steed is gone, and one is brought back to the 
fact that the thought dominates the gallop." 

Is the undoubted prominence of the horse in this 
poem due to the constant recurrence in the rhymes of 
the << i " sound, reminding one of the fact of the 
riding, as well as to the constant refrain " as I ride ? " 
Should you say that the rhythm suggested galloping, 
or a more steady swing? Upon this Mr. Bulkeley 
says (London Browning Society Papers): " What a 
journey the Arab gets through with in the course of 
the day with his long easy strides ! " As well as the 
stress on the accented syllables of the verse, they also 
have quantity, the «< i " sound being a very long 
sound. Compare this with the preceding poem as to 
poetical ornaments. 

" Muleykeh." The line in this poem has six ac- 
cents, the majority of the feet being iambic, but there 
is a good deal of irregularity. For example, in the 
very first line there are two anapaestic feet : 

If a stranger passed the tent of Hoseyn, he cried " A churl's." 
Again, line 3 begins with a trochaic foot and* the last 
foot is anapaestic : 

" Nay would a friend exclaim, he needs nor pity nor scorn." 

Point out all such irregularities. Are there any 
perfectly regular lines } The variety given to the 
stanza by the irregularities is added to by the 



26 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

rhyme scheme which does not obtrude itself as in the 
previous poems. Notice that the first and fourth, 
second and third, third and sixth lines rhyme. Is 
there much ornamentation of the verse in this poem } 
Is there any other line or phrase in the poem as beau- 
tiful as line 72? Of this line Mr. Bulkeley writes 
**How admirably not only the swiftness of Muleykeh 
as she dashes past us to the goal, but, what we chiefly 
see, the hairy amplitude of the long tail and the rush 
of the hoofs, are brought before us." 

** Donald " presents still another variety of rhythm 
and rhyming. In the first stanza, each line has three 
accents, and anapaestic and iambic feet mixed. Notice 
also that every line ends with an extra short syllable 
(called a weak or feminine ending), and that the 
rhymes are in the second and fourth lines. Compare 
the remaining stanzas with this first one, and notice all 
the variations from it that may occur. When the 
story reaches its climax notice that the speaker uses 
the present tense instead of the past, which he has 
been using, and that Donald's own words are given 
directly. There is also considerable variation of the 
rhythm. See, for examples, lines 189 to 196. 

Is poetic imagery any more characteristic of this 
poem than of the preceding } 

**.Tray." The principal irregularities of rhythm 
in this poem are in the first stanza where the fifth line 
is broken off after three feet so that it does not rhyme 
with the first and second lines as in all the other 
stanzas, and the double rhymes ending in weak sylla- 
bles, in lines 6, 9, 10, 28, and 29. Point out what 
the normal form of the verse is and any other varia- 
tions you may discover in it. 

*' Herve Riel," This poem is very fine as to rhythm. 



ADVENTURE AND HEROISM 2/ 

rhyme, and stanza-form. The majority of the lines 
have four stresses) but a good many have only two, 
and several have three. The feet vary from one to 
three unaccented syllables followed by an accented 
syllable. In line 75 there is even a foot with five 
unaccented syllables, thus : 

** Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide seas profound." 

Many of the short lines might be scanned as if they 
had three feet, thus *. 

" Then was called a council straight." 
but the ear tells one that such a line is more in har- 
mony with the rest of the verse if scanned — 

*' Then was called a council straight." 

The effect of all these short syllables is to reflect the 
excitement of the situation and the necessity for 
quick and decisive action. 

Notice that the stanzas vary in length just as para- 
graphs in prose might, each stanza taking up a fresh 
phase of the story. Compare the rhyming of the 
different stanzas with each other and notice also the 
examples of alliteration. Compare with the other 
poems in this respect. 

**Echetlos" is comparatively simple in its form, 
stanzas of three lines, all of which rhyme with each 
other. The lines have six feet, mostly iambic, but 
notice the variations. 

'* Incident of the French Camp." Notice how 
simple the rhyme and rhythm is in this, compared 
with '* Herve Riel," for example. The lines regu- 
larly alternate between four accents and three accents, 
and the rhymes also alternate. 



28 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

" Pheidippides." The peculiarity of this poem is 
that, akhough the rhythm is iambic, most of the lines 
begin with an accented syllable, sometimes followed 
by two unaccented, sometimes by one unaccented 
syllable. 

The rhymes are also distributed in a very curious 
way. The first line rhymes with the seventh, the 
second with the eighth, the third with the sixth and the 
fourth with the fifth. Writing on ** Browning's Poetic 
Form" in Poet-lore (Vol. II., p. 234, June, 1890), 
Dr. D. G. Brinton says : ** Not unfrequently. Brown- 
ing employs rhyme in such a manner that one must 
regard it merely as a means of heightening his second- 
ary rhythm. The rhyming words are so far apart 
that we are aware only of a faint but melodious echo. 
The always artificial and somewhat mechanical effect 
of rhyme is thus avoided, while its rhythmic essence is 
retained. I illustrate this by a verse from * Pheidip- 
pides ; ' a masterpiece of artistic skill." 

Does the language in this poem appear to you to be 
richer and fuller than in any of the preceding poems t 
Is this due to the nature and setting of the subject, or 
to the use of poetical imagery ? 

(^uer;j for Discussioit, — From the study of these 
poems, should you think Browning was lacking in 
poetic form, as some people have said, or should you 
think rather that he showed consummate skill in adapt- 
ing his form to the needs of his thought ? 



Folk Poems 

Page. 

Vol. Text Note 

" The Boy and the Angel' * iv 150 384 

"The Twins" iv 201 392 

" The Pied Piper of Hamelin " iv 209 393 

"Gold Hair: A Story of Pornic " , . • . v 147 305 

" The Cardinal and the Dog " xii 213 367 

" Ponte deir Angelo, Venice*' xii 222 370 

" The Bean- Feast " xii 216 368 

" The Pope and the Net " xii 214 368 

"Muckle-Mouth Meg" xii 219 369 

I. Topic for Papery Classwork, or Private Study. 

— Sketch of the Subject-matter of the Poems. For 
help in this see notes to Carnberwell Browfting as 
referred to above. 

II. Topic for Paper, Classworh, or Private Study, 

— How the Story is Told. 

Hints: — With the exception of '* Ponte dell* 
Angelo*' and "The Pope and the Net," these 
poems are all told in the simplest narrative style, and 
these two are merely given a semblance of the dramatic 
monologue form, the former by the fact that the story 
is put into the mouth of the person who is rowing 
the boat, evidently the poet, and the latter, by its 
being put into the mouth of a visitor to the Pope in 
question. In either of these cases does the character 
of the speaker affect the point of the poem in any 
way ? When a poem is told as a simple story, it 
gives the narrator an opportunity to intersperse com- 
ments of his own about the story. Are there any 



30 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

such comments in **The Boy and the Angel ?" In 
** The Twins," before the poet begins the little story, 
he expresses an opinion of Martin Luther and the 
sort of fables he used to write — so pointed in their 
moral that they stuck like burs. In the ** Pied Piper," 
the only comment made by the poet is at the end 
where he addresses his little friend Willie Macready in 
regard to the moral to be drawn from the story. In 
the three last stanzas of "Gold Hair" the poet also 
draws a moral. Does he intrude any remarks of his 
own throughout the rest of the poem ? In ** The 
Cardinal and the Dog" how much does the poet him- 
self appear ? In **The Bean Feast" he expresses an 
opinion as to the story he is going to tell ; what is it ? 
And in ** Muckle-Mouth Meg " the poet is not ob- 
truded at all. Although the poems are all in simple 
narrative style, most of them are enlivened by quota- 
tions which give them a dramatic effect. In which 
of these poems under consideration is this dramatic 
effect most marked ? 

Query for Discussioji. — Since a dramatic effect is 
gained both in the narrative poems and those in mono- 
logue form, what is the real difference between them ? 

III. Topic for Paper i Classworky or Private Study. 
— The Folk-lore of these Poems. 

Of all these poems the only one that is purely imagi- 
nary is ** The Boy and the Angel." For suggestions as 
to the sources of the others, see notes to Camberzvell 
Brotvning as given above. Observe the differences in 
the nature of the stories. Some tell only of possible 
events, others have imaginative elements in them. 

Of the imaginative stories is there any more prob- 
able than another.? What are the imaginative ele- 
ments in each of the stories and what is their source ? 



FOLK POEMS 31 

In **The Pied Piper of Hamelin " the imaginative 
element is, of course, the effect of the piper's music 
on the rats and then upon the children. What 
stories in mythology does this remind you of, and 
what is the explanation of such stories ? See *' Hymn 
to Hermes," translated by Shelley, also Mercury, 
Arion, Orpheus, in Gayley's ** Classic Myths in Eng- 
lish Literature." These are myths of the wind as a 
musician ; Hermes, or the wind, is also the leader of 
souls to Hades after death. There are also many 
traces in folk-stories of a belief in the idea that the 
soul escaped from the body in the form of some little 
animal, a mouse or a bird. The story of the " Pied 
Piper" combines all these mythical elements in a 
setting of reality. In the story of " Gold Hair," it 
seems so improbable that the girl should be able to 
hide the gold coins in her hair that this story may be 
said to have an imaginative element in it, also. In 
"The Cardinal and the Dog" the big black dog 
might be explained as a subjective hallucination due 
to a diseased state of the mind, but in a superstitious 
age such appearances of a disordered brain were con- 
sidered veritable visions from the other world. In 
this case the dog was an emissary of the Devil come 
to claim his own, as mentioned in the notes in the 
Camberwell Brown'mg. (See Fiske, " Myths and 
Myth-makers" and Cox, ** Mythology of the Aryan 
Nations," for further information upon these mythical 
dogs.)^ 

Or it might be explained simply as a story invented 
by the Protestants, through their superstitious hor- 
ror over his illness and death, to cast discredit upon 
this Cardinal, who was especially their enemy. 
Which do you think the most likely? 



32 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

In *' Ponte dell' Angelo " the imaginative element 
is prominent and evidently belongs to the order of 
legend called explanatory, that is, it was probably in- 
vented to account for the figure of the guardian angel. 

The poet has not worked up the subject matter in 
any of these poems, but has simply put into verse the 
stories as he found them. 

(Queries for Discussion. — Which do you find the most 
entertaining of these stories, — those with or those with- 
out imaginative elements? Are there qualities in ** The 
Boy and the Angel," Browning's own invention, that 
place it above all the other poems ? What should 
you say they were ? 

IV. Topic for Paper, Classwor^, or Private Study. 
— The Inner Meaning of the Poems. 

Hints : — The simplicity belonging to the story and 
way of telling it in this series of poetic tales belongs 
also to the meaning. ** Muckle-Mouth Meg " can- 
not be said to have any deeper design than to be lively 
and amusing. The moral lesson brought out in the 
last stanza of ** The Pied Piper" is so hackneyed a 
maxim that it is put jokingly, the forced rhyme assisting, 
to let the reader see that the poet is laughingly in 
earnest while he points the moral and holds up a 
warning finger over the mischief befalling the man 
who refuses to pay the piper. 

Which of the other poems are entirely humorous in 
their aim and implications ? What should you say 
was the moral of** The Pope and the Net ?" That 
humility was a useless virtue except for the lower 
clergy ? Or is the poem susceptible of a less jocular 
moral turn ? The virtues of another sort of a prelate 
are illustrated in **The Bean Feast." This Pope 
professed humility even after he became Pope, and 



FOLK POEMS 33 

when it was not only of no advantage to himself but 
was of advantage to others. Yet, although the popular 
story of this good Pope is told in a more earnest way, 
so that the lovable and benevolent qualities of the 
kindly man arouse a glow of genuine esteem for him 
which is, in itself, essentially moral, it may be noticed 
that the canny Pope who made humility useful to him- 
self instead of to others, is written about in a similar 
broad and tolerant vein, as if the human characteristics 
of each Pope, despite the fact that one was morally 
superior to the other, were almost equally enjoyable to 
the poet, and made so, also, by his treatment of the 
two stories, to the reader. Do the two stories enhance 
each other, when their inner bearing with respect to 
these two contrasting characters is brought out ? It is 
not unusual for Browning to hang his portraits in this 
way, putting two diirerent types side by side, as com- 
panion pieces. 

Why is the ** Ponte dell' Angelo " story the most 
naive of all these folk-stories in its moral implication.? 
Notice that the unethical conduct of the lawyer in 
fleecing all his clients is counterbalanced by his prayers 
to the Madonna, so that the story leaves it to be sup- 
posed that God's fit punishment may be delayed re- 
peatedly and finally remitted altogether through due 
observance of church ceremonies. What do you think 
about the morality of this .'' 

'* Gold Hair " has perhaps a quizzical quality. It 
is ironical, half in earnest, but meaning something a 
litde different from what is expressly said. It is 
written with a kind of teasing enjoyment, on the 
poet's part, of a pious anecdote of a simple-minded 
Catholic familv. So perhaps is ** The Cardinal and 
the Dog," written with a similar relish for Protestant 
3 



34 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

simple-mindedness in the credulity over the apparitioi\ 
sent to scourge the enormous wickedness of the Car^ 
dinal, whose crime it was to be on the other side in the 
great church controversy and its most stanch and 
able friend. But how do you guess this ? The poem 
is written entirely from the credulous standpoint, and 
the last line is in accord with this too, and yet it sug- 
gests that the story is a partisan one. In the case of 
** Gold Hair " a more skeptical point of view is insin- 
uated — the point of view of the hearers of the legend 
in an ** after-time " (see lines 56-60), when the 
** mouth might twitch with a dubious smile." This 
quizzical quality underlying the narration of the story 
is not without a sober twist at the end (lines I 36-1 50), 
which leaves one in doubt again whether or not a 
more serious moral is intended ? What are you in- 
clined to think about this } Is the poet really of the 
opinion that the heart is desperately wicked, or is he 
even here only pretending to be serious ? If so, what 
is his meaning here ? Is he really more amused than 
shocked over the miserhness of the girl, and disposed 
to sympathize with her attachment to the things of 
earth ? And what does his professed edification amount 
to then ? Does he assent to the doctrine of original 
sin, while meaning something a little different — that 
the human heart is necessarily human, and full ot 
earthly longings and is likely to be unnatural or per- 
haps hypocritical if it assumes to care only for heaven ? 
Which of the remaining poems of this series are per- 
fectly serious in their moral implication ? Is the sportive- 
ness which has been noticed due in all cases to the intro- 
duction somewhere in the poem of the poet's or some 
other point of view than that of the original story-teller ? 
Which stories are told the most simply and directly ? 



FOLK POEMS 35 

**The Boy and the Angel," which is evidently- 
deeper and richer in its inner meaning than any 
of the other poems, is told with absolute simplic- 
ity and without any of the doubleness belonging to 
most of the others ; yet it is to be noticed that the 
most pointed of its couplets is given, in parenthesis, as 
a comment of the narrator's ; and it happens that this was 
a later addition to the poem, first appearing in 1863. 
It is interesting, too, to learn that various other little 
touches that have deepened its significance were added, 
after its first appearance in Hood'' s Magazme in i 845, 
upon its inclusion, later in the same year, in the 
Bells and Pomegranates Series, with other poems which 
we know were revised and sometimes changed in ac- 
cordance with the criticism of Elizabeth Barrett, who 
read the proofs. There is a passing mention in a letter 
of hers to Browning (August 30, 1845, see " Letters 
of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett," vol. i. p. 
180), which leads to the inference that she thought 
the inner meaning of this poem was open to objection 
on the score of its portrayal of the angel Gabriel. 
Later (p. 261), she says, ** ' Theocrite ' overtakes 
that wish of mine which ran on so fast." The main 
alterations made in the second version were : the ad- 
dition of lines 55-58, 63 and 64, 6q and 68, 71 and 
72, and the final couplet, and the omission after line 
74 of the following couplet : 

" Be again the boy all curled ; 
I will finish with the world." 

There were a few other slighter alterations which 
served to make the verse more regular without aff'ect- 
ing the inner significance of the poem, but these cited 
seem designed either to make the storv clearer, bv 



36 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

detailing how the change was brought about, as in 
lines 55 to 58, 63 and 64, or to render it more un- 
mistakable that the moral lesson implied is not the 
hopeless superiority of the angelic over the human but 
rather the inimitable excellence of the human which 
uplifts it and sets it side by side with the angelic. Theo- 
crite's ** little human praise " had a quality so distinctly 
its own that Gabriel's best efforts to rival it were in- 
effectual. It was then in reality not at all inferior or to 
be disdained ; and the emphasis is laid not on the 
point that it was useless or presumptuous for Theocrite 
to wish to praise God the ** Great-way " as Pope, 
but rather on the point that not even angelic power can 
displace the human. The omission of the couplet 
quoted tends to redeem the archangel from any assump- 
tion of superiority or charge of officiousness, and the 
couplet finally added puts boy and angel on the same 
level as twin spirits in God's praise, the human and the 
angelic not seeking to outrival but to supplement one 
another, — ** They sought God, side by side." 

Queries for Discussion. — Do you think these alter- 
ations are improvements ? Do they justify themselves 
by preventing the poem from being mistaken as leading 
merely to the hackneyed moral that every one must 
stay in the place to which he was born t Is the spirit 
of the poem aristocratic in the sense that it shows that 
all cannot be equal, or is it democratic, in the sense 
that it shows that place or rank is unimportant and 
that different personalities, because each is of unique 
value, are equal and never to be superseded by any 
other ? Mr. George Willis Cooke says of this poem : 
" The lesson is the same as that of * Pippa Passes,' 
* All service ranks the same with God,' and therefore 
we are not to seek to escape from the tasks assigned 



FOLK POEMS 37 

to us.'* Do you agree with this ? But does not the 
poem intimate, on the contrary, that in this case, at 
any rate, all service did not rank the same with God, 
since he missed in Gabriel's praise a quality that only 
Theocrite's had ? and does it follow, if it be accepted 
that the moral is essentially the same, that therefore 
*' we are not to seek to escape from the tasks assigned 
us " ? Or do you think that Elizabeth Barrett's 
quarrel with the original version of the poem may 
really have been that its inner significance might be 
misinterpreted in this way ? Do the alterations tend 
to make clear what the poet's design really amounts to ? 
And do you think that this design is to illustrate the 
value and significance to God of each and every human 
individuality ? But, in that case, why was not 
Theocrite's praise of God when he was Pope as grate- 
ful as when he was a boy at his work-bench ? Or is 
this merely because his office as Pope was not his own, 
but thrust on him by the angel, so that the drift of the 
poem remains the same, without emphasis upon the 
question of rank, but only upon the question of indi- 
vidual worth ? 

The interpretation of ** Gold Hair" suggested in 
the ** Hints" on that poem is that the naivete of the 
guide-book story amused the poet, while he detected 
in it, despite its simplicity, a wise kernel of perpetual 
truth, the truth belonging to a keen observation of human 
foibles. So, in re-telling the legend he gives it a whimsical 
cast, but half accepts its old-time pious reflection upon 
the weaknesses of mortality, yet not without managing 
to convey another more modern and more tolerant way 
of regarding such weaknesses, as frailties so natural to 
the flesh that sin and blame scarcely belong to them, 
so much as suspicion does to all the pretences of 



38 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

humanity to be saintly. Are you inclined to think 
this the right interpretation or not ? Will any other 
interpretation account as well for the humor of the 
poem ? Why not ? Does it agree, in a way charac- 
teristic of Browning, with the view of the human 
presented in *' The Boy and the Angel," as having a 
distinct quality of its own through differing from the 
heavenly which it must in vain strive to rival ? But 
do you think it morally good for man that he should 
accept such a view of human nature ? Would 
it be better for him to take the old pious view and be 
deceived, if it be deception, and to think that he may 
become perfect, for fear lest he cease to attempt to 
improve ? Or, do you think it best for a human 
being to be clear-sighted enough to recognize his 
merely human hmitations and yet to struggle to attain 
the utmost possible degree of development ? 

V. Topic for Paper, Private Study, or Classwork. 
— The Art of the Poems. 

Hints : — The art-form in ** The Boy and the 
Angel " is very simple. The lines have four stresses, 
and each stanza has two lines rhymed. There is 
some variation in the distribution of the stresses. 
Sometimes the first syllable in the line is accented, 
when the line is seven syllables in length, and some- 
times the second syllable is accented. There are a 
few places where each syllable is accented without 
any unaccented syllable between, for example in line 
2, where ** Praise " and ** God " both have an ac- 
cent, and in line 19, where every syllable is accented. 
Is there any other line in the poem where ** Praise 
God " is differently accented ? The language all 
through this poem is exceedingly simple. The com- 
parison in hne 25, **Like a rainbow's birth" is the 



FOLK POEMS 39 

only one in the poem, is it not ? Is there not a cer- 
tain charm in this very simple language exactly suited 
to the subject ? 

In '*The Twins" the rhyme and rhythm scheme 
is also very simple, the lines having three stresses and 
the first and third, second and fourth lines rhyming. 
Notice if there are any variations in the distribution of 
the short Hnes. 

In the '* Pied Piper" the lines usually have four 
stresses, but the unaccented syllables are distributed 
very irregularly. Point out all the lines you find with 
a different number of accents. Point out the two- 
syllabled rhymes ending in short syllables, weak end- 
ings as they are called. Is there any regularity about 
the distribution of the rhymes } About the length of 
the stanzas ? Are the shorter lines introduced at 
stated places. The effect of all this variation of form 
is to make the poem bright and rapid in movement. 

** Gold Hair ' ' has lines with four stresses some- 
times preceded by one, sometimes by two unaccented 
syllables. The very first stanza, however, begins with 
an accented syllable followed by a pause. Are there 
any other examples of this in the poem ? There are 
also some lines beginning with an accented syllable and 
followed by a short syllable. The last line in each 
stanza, however, the fifth, has only three stresses. 

Is the fifth stanza of this poem the most poetical on 
account of its comparison between the sunset sky and 
the death of Gold- Hair ? Are there any other examples 
of poetical figures in the poem ? 

In *« The Cardinal and the Dog" the lines have 
seven stresses, the accented syllable being preceded by 
an unaccented one. In some cases the accent falls on 
syllables that seem short, while a syllable that seemj 



40 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMTVIES 

long is unaccented; for example in the first line **the" 
is accented, and the word next to it, **high," is un- 
accented. Do you find any other examples of this ? 
Do you object to the roughness of this sort of accenting, 
or does it remind you of the early English ballad form, 
and so give a quaintness to the poem in keeping with 
the subject. Point out those lines which end with a 
short unaccented syllable. Notice that the stanzas 
are of different lengths. Also that the rhyme scheme 
is different for each stanza. 

In *'Ponte dell' Angelo " all the lines except the 
last have four stresses and that has three. Point out 
all the variations you observe in the distribution of the 
short syllables. What is the rhyme scheme } Are 
there any poetical figures in the poem ? 

In '*The Bean Feast" the lines have six stresses 
with a short syllable preceding the accented syllable, 
with some variations. For example, line i begins 
with an accented syllable followed by an unaccented 
one. Almost every hne has also an extra short syl- 
lable after the accented syllable in the middle of 
the line, and sometimes two extra short syllables. 
Point out all such places and notice how the regularity 
of this irregularity adds to the rhythmical effect of the 
poem. The rhyme scheme is simple. Are there 
any bad rhymes in the poem ? Is the rhythm of the 
** Pope and the Net " similar to that of " The Bean 
Feast." Point out any differences you may observe, 
also the difference in the length of the stanza and 
the rhymes. In *« Muckle-Mouth Meg" the lines 
alternate between three and four stresses, preceded 
sometimes by two and sometimes by one unaccented 
syllable. There are two rhymes to each stanza, 
alternating lines rhyming together. Sometimes the 



FOLK POEMS 41 

rhymes are double, in wnich case the line ends with 
an extra short syllable. Is there any regularity in the 
distribution of the double and single rhymes ? From 
the study of the distribution of stresses and unaccented 
syllables in these poems in how many different kinds 
of metre are they ? Does the poet use alliteration 
much in any of them ? What allusions are there (see 
Notes, Cambei'zvell Browning) , and what sort of relation 
do they bear to the subject matter ? 

(Queries for Discussion. — Upon what do these 
poems depend chiefly for their poetical effect, rhythm 
and rhyme, poetic ornamentation, the imaginative 
quahty of the subject-matter, their humor or the 
terse dramatic way in which they are told ? 

Is there any one of the group that you like better 
than all the rest, if so why ? Or do you like each 
one for its own special qualities ? 



Phases of Romantic Love 

Page 

Vol. Text Note 

"Garden Fancies" iv ii 365 

*' The Laboratory " iv 19 366 

" The Confessional " iv 21 366 

"Cristina" iv 25 367 

" The Lost Mistress " iv 27 367 

*' A Woman's Last Word " iv 31 367 

"Evelyn Hope" iv 33 367 

"Love among the Ruins " iv 35 368 

" A Lovers' Quarrel" iv 38 368 

" Two in the Campagna " iv 103 378 

"A Serenade" iv 107 378 

" One Way of Love " \ iv 109 379 

" Another Way of Love " j ' y ^/y 

"A Pretty Woman" iv 112 379 

" In Three Days " \ iv 118 379 

"In a Year" j ^^^ 

"Mesmerism" iv 156 385 

"The Glove" iv 162 385 

" In a Gondola " iv 184 389 

"A Light Woman" iv 203 392 

" The Last Ride Together " iv 205 393 

" Porphyria' s Lover " iv 275 398 

" Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli " v 91 299 

" Dis Aliter Visum " v 158 306 

"Too Late" v 164 307 

"Confessions" . . v 213 313 

" Youth and Art " v 218 314 

" A Likeness " v 222 315 

"Bifurcation" ix 209 300 

" Numpholeptos " ix 211 300 

"St. Martin's Summer " ix 2i6 301 



PHASES OF ROMANTIC LOVE 43 

Page 

Vol. Text Note 

** Solomon and Balkis " xi 236 325 

" Cristina and Monaldeschi " xi 240 326 

'* Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli " . . . , xi 244 327 

" Adam, Lilith, and Eve" xi 246 327 

" Rosny " xii 198 362 

" Inapprehensiveness " xii 211 366 

"Which?" xii 212 366 

Sonnet :" Eyes, calm beside thee " .... xii 269 380 

I. Topic for Paper, Private Study, or Ciasszvork. 
— The Life of Love Illustrated in Browning's Shorter 
Poems. 

Hints : — Characterize the various phases of love 
brought into light, grouping together those which have 
some mood or trait in common. The slighter and 
more evanescent moods of *' Inapprehensiveness," 
and the sonnet, ** Eyes, calm beside thee " may be 
said to belong to latent love. Not the passion itself 
but the suppression of the passion felt to be ready to 
spring into life is what is expressed in both of these 
poems. Notice also whether the expression is direct, 
whether it is the possible lover who speaks and tells 
the story of his own mood, and whether in both cases 
the mood is betrayed in a purely lyrical form, or how ? 
What other poems of this series may be classed vs^ith 
these on the score that they reveal a nascent or possible 
but undeveloped love ? In ** Garden Fancies ' ' the 
love portrayed has reached a later stage of develop- 
ment and yet still is in its dawn, and others of the 
poems may be classed with these. If you decide that 
"A Likeness," **St. Martin's Summer," ** Youth 
and Art," '* Dis Aliter Visum," "Evelyn Hope," 
**Too Late " also belong to this class ; observe and 
point out which are the nearest like the first in the 
slight character of the emotion betrayed ; and also 



44 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

what, besides their general resemblance, are the differ- 
ences among these in respect to the various circum- 
stances which have checked or determined the develop- 
ment of the initial attraction. "A Likeness," for 
example, is the veiled expression of a teasing memory 
of a special personal attraction secretly cherished, which 
has been called up in the possible lover's mind by 
such chance incidents as the poem relates, but which 
no one guesses and which is kept unacknowledged. 
In all the other poems just mentioned the phases of 
love shown have been affected by obstacles of various 
sorts. In "Youth and Art," and **Dis Aliter 
Visum" the daw^ning attraction of the lovers for one 
another has been checked in its development by 
worldly considerations. In '* Evelyn Hope" the 
death, and in ** Too Late" the marriage and at last 
the death of the beloved woman have hindered the 
lovers' avowals, but instead, of being strong enough to 
check the development of feeling, they have served in- 
stead to awaken the lover to a more poignant realiza- 
tion of its nature and promise. In " St. Martin's 
Summer" quite another sort of obstacle thwarts the 
development of the awakening attraction. The re- 
membrance of a deep and rich love, now past, besides 
which any other seems but an imitation and pale re- 
flection, intervenes like a ghost to cast over the present 
love a shadow of discredit. ** Which ? " ** Num- 
pholeptos," "A Pretty Woman, " belong in a class 
by themselves because they seem rather to be con- 
cerned with the idea of love than with a specific per- 
sonal impression. Therefore, it will be well to 
discuss these more particularly under the following 
topic. But of all the other poems cited in this group, 
do any express a phase of love which has been left 



PHASES OF ROMANTIC LOVE 45 

dormant or has reached little more than a nascent 
stage ? If you think none do, you may class the rest 
together as expressive of fully awakened love, and then 
consider under what different conditions this love is 
manifested; and also, what various phases of love are 
portrayed, as jealous love in ** The Laboratory," be- 
trayed love in ** The Confessional," subjected love in 
** A Woman's Last Word," specious love in ** A 
Light Woman," and love triumphing over obstacles 
of various sorts, or affected by them more or less fatally 
in the others. 

Which of these poems are the more complex in 
their personnel ? For example, in some of the poems 
of both of these two classes of latent and awakened 
love, the expression of love the poem gives involves 
nobody but the two lovers. In others it is the en- 
trance of the outer world upon the scene, either in 
the shape of other persons who actually take a part 
in the poem or of personal considerations which affect 
it indirectly, or merely as an external influence in the 
mind of the lover, which occasions or qualifies the 
outpouring of expression. Again, it may be noticed 
that this entrance of external influences under these 
different guises leads to various effects : it may help to 
make the love stronger or more conscious, or may tend 
to create the difficulties which beset its development. 

Illustrate in the poems the different varieties of 
movement in the story and the ways in which the 
love and its expression is accordingly affected. Other 
actors besides the lovers, outer influences too, for in- 
stance, thwart the love and make it lead to tragical 
conclusions in a large group of these poems, — ** The 
Confessional," ** The Laboratory," ** In a Gondola," 
*' Porphyria's Lover," «' In a Balcony," ** Cristina 



46 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

and Monaldeschi." In what respects does ** A Light 
Woman " belong to this group, and wherein does it 
differ from it ? In which among these poems are the 
lovers affected by the outer influence so that they them- 
selves share in bringing about the tragedy, and thus 
add to the emotional intensity ? Outer influences of 
still another class make both the rapturous mood and 
the actual separation between the lovers in **Love 
among the Ruins" and "Bifurcation." Ideals of 
duty, in the one case, based upon social life, intervene 
to disjoin the lovers, and in the other the intrusion 
upon their happiness of the larger social lite and the 
imposing achievements of the past but serves to make 
felt the more vitally their intensely human and merely 
personal emotion. '* Solomon and Balkis " classes 
with these poems in the one respect that it touches on 
the effect of self-indulgence and worldly importance 
upon a personal relation. It satirizes the sort of love- 
susceptibility growing in a vitiated way from such 
roots of external influence, and shows its merely physi- 
cal quality. Again in ** Rosny " an external ideal of 
fame and honor uses love as its instrument and sends 
the lover to his death. In " Two in the Campagna " 
a mood of the subtlest nature intervenes between the 
lovers. It is an external influence that is absolutely 
immaterial and impersonal, felt to belong to the in- 
finite, because so vague and large and elusive, and yet 
interposing a nameless bafflement upon the human 
yearning to encompass all within its love. In ** Mes- 
merism " personal love is brought into a similar subtle 
contact with mysterious influences which it would 
subordinate to the service of personal desire to the 
extent of gaining a dominance felt to be an unlawful 
usurpation over the loved one's will. Compare with 



PHASES OF ROMANTIC LOVE 47 

these poems of conflict between love and external in- 
fluences of some sort, the little group of poems ex- 
pressing the conflict of love with the merely personal 
disagreements and selfishnesses of the lovers — *< A 
Lovers' Quarrel," "A Woman's Last Word," 
''Another Way of Love," and *' In a Year," notic- 
ing how in all of these discord arises, and how far it 
goes towards either the destruction of love, the sub- 
jugation of one personality by the other, or a reaction 
of one against the other. *' The Lost Mistress," "A 
Serenade," ** Cristina," "Mary Wollstonecraft," 
and " The Last Ride Together " are alike in relating 
nothing of the external or internal sources of friction 
disturbing the love-relation, and in expressing in 
various ways the triumph of love over all slights and 
without self-abasement in the soul of the rejected lover. 
Notice throughout these poems how far they make 
known the different points of view of the two lovers 
concerned and also how the selfish subjugation of one 
by the other, as in *' A Woman's Last Word," does 
not permit the attainment of such strength and psychi- 
cal victory on the part of the less loved lover as the 
spiritual isolation of the lover in *' Cristina." 

"One Way of Love " and ** Another Way of 
Love," also "In Three Days" and "In a Year," 
seem to have been written as companion poems ex- 
pressing supplementary phases of love, the one pair 
of poems presenting the opposite points of view toward 
love of two different kinds of lovers; the second pair, 
of two points of view, the one a man's, the other the 
woman's, in the history of what may have been the 
same love, affected by time and change. It is a 
woman who speaks in "In a Year j " but is it justi- 
fiable to suppose that in these two contrasted poems 



48 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

the two points of view are compared and meant to be 
characteristic of any woman's and any man's nature, 
or does Browning's treatment of love forbid the sup- 
position that it is always the man who is inconstant ? 
Is he right or mistaken in this ? In the lover of 
** Cristina " and of **One Way of Love" has he 
portrayed an attitude of constancy and purely psychi- 
cal love maintained without any return and in the face of 
neglect which would be impossible in a man ? 
Compare with "Mary Wollstonecraft." Compare 
with Browning's other rejected lovers. 

Queries for DiscussioJi. — Is Browning's treatment 
of love characterized by a wider range and greater 
complexity than is usual in love-poems ? Compare 
as to range and complexity with any modern poets ; 
for example, William Morris, Tennyson, Emerson, 
Whitman, Lowell, Poe, Kipling, etc. 

It has been said by some who have admitted the 
wider range of Browning that his very variety is a 
sign of a certain aloofness of the poet from the emo- 
tions he depicts ; that they are not his direct emotions, 
but his exploited emotions, the personal basis all art 
must have being deflected and rearranged to suit the 
imagined points of view of different souls ; and that 
they are, therefore, externalized and shaped too much 
by the intellect, the outcome growing too cold to stir 
us. As Dr. Brinton says (see *' Facettes of Love 
from Browning," Poet-lore y Vol. I. pp. 1—28, Jan., 
1889), ♦* We can find many powerful and trenchant 
portrayals of passion in his pages, yet his lines rarely 
cause to vibrate a similar chord in the human heart." 
This writer concludes that his love poems fail to touch 
the heart and that they fail because ** his intellectual 
nature constantly interferes with the full and free ex- 



PHASES OF ROMANTIC LOVE 49 

pression of the emotions," his theory of dramatic 
workmanship excluding direct self-expression, his 
public feels the poet's detachment, and the falsity of a 
theory of art which involves a sensitive shyness on the 
part of the poet himself. 

But is it true that Browning's love poems do not 
touch his readers ? Have they a quality of their own, 
which, although it may be discriminated as different in 
kind as well as in degree and variety from the poems 
of most other poets, is neither inferior in force and 
ardor, nor without an underlying basis of genuine and 
vital personal experience ? If they have a recognizable 
quality of this nature can the theory of art which 
would exclude his theory as defective be held to with- 
out narrowness ? Would not a theory of art which 
recognized the inherent value of the two methods, of 
both the direct and the indirect use in art of personal 
experience, be the better to hold to, and justify the con- 
clusion that the art decried, instead of being wrong, 
was an accession to literature of a rare and original 
sort ? But is it altogether unprecedented ? Are there 
prototypes of this variety in other dramatic art ? Is 
not the intellect, as well as experience, of right, an 
element in the transmuting of personality into a work 
of art ? 

Dr. Brinton sums up his view as follows : ** The 
living presence of this emotional personality is the 
secret of the perennial attraction of the very greatest 
works of art ; and the artist who deliberately rejects 
this will never touch that chord which makes the 
whole world kin, nor achieve his own best possible 
results." May the truth in this statement be ad- 
mitted and yet made reconcilable with the recognition 
in Browning's poems of an emotional personality 
4 



50 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

livingly present but moulded and controlled to suit an 
artistic purpose, building " broad on the roots of 
things," or is it true that he *' deliberately rejects" 
the emotional personality and **will never touch that 
chord," etc.? 

Does a poet, on the other hand, who iimits his 
work to the expression of a personal experience, also 
limit his appreciation to the understanding of a person 
who has had a similar experience, and so run a greater 
risk of Hmitation and growing out of date than a poet 
who broadens his work in line with larger and differ- 
entiated experience ? 

Is the merely subjective class of poetical work more 
permanent and powerful in its effects and fame than 
the dramatic and the epic ? 

II. Topic for Paper, Classwork, or Private Study. 
— The Ideals of Love ImpHed in the Poems. 

Hi?its : — Can you derive from this series of poems 
some definition of love, as you think the poet must 
have conceived of it in order to have written of love 
in all of them just as he has ? Are they ever contra- 
dictory ? and if they are consistent in a general way, 
in what does their unity, and in what do their differ- 
ences consist ? 

The differences in the quality of the love in " The 
Laboratory " and in '* Cristina and Monaldeschi " seem 
to be utterly opposed to the love poured forth regard- 
less of slight or resentment in ** A Serenade," ** One 
Way of Love," *' Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli," 
or " Cristina." Yet one is neither induced to blame 
the revengeful little lady who so gloats over the pros- 
pect of poisoning her magnificent rival, or to withhold 
a certain sympathy from the justice in the wronged 
Cristina' s revenge upon her ungrateful lover, at the 



PHASES OF ROMANTIC LOVE 51 

same time that one appreciates the steadfast purity of 
the love of PauHne's lover, the utterly self-regardless 
strength of Mary Wollstonecraft's love, or the ecstatic 
victory in the persistency of the love of the lover of 
Cristina. If the reader be inclined to blame or to feel 
distaste for any of these different ways of loving it is 
rather to be attributed to his own prejudices than to 
any bias Browning shows. 

How then can any predilection on the poet's part 
be perceived ? Can it be assumed that his sympathy 
goes out to all sorts of genuine feeling, whether leading 
to commendable results and happy social reladons or 
not ? All such considerations, although not with- 
out an importance of their own, are apparently sec- 
ondary, in any instance, to the supreme importance of 
the service of love to the lover through the revelation 
it affords him of his essential nature, any kind of real 
love being a possible initiation into a disciplinary spirit- 
ual process. 

The differences to be noted, then, in the ideals of 
love in these poems, if this general theory is accepted, 
are those that belong actually to real life, to different 
characters under different circumstances, the underly- 
ing unity being the worth of all sorts of such emotions 
and experiences in the development of the individual 
soul. How will such an hypothesis suit throughout 
all these poems ? Can you find any that fits these 
various poems better ? 

This one will account for the inclusion of such pen- 
etrating expositions of merely physical passion and 
triumphs of vengefulness as those of the fierce little 
French lady of '* The Laboratory," and such ex- 
tremely subtle spiritual yearnings for mastery over 
another and such triumphs of self-refrain as those of 



52 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

the self-contained lover of ** Mesmerism." The first 
ideal of love, in *' The Laboratory," is in its ow^n 
way as legitimately the outcome of a crude nature, 
driven by the goad of its own sensations, aiFected by 
circumstances and the environment of the time, and 
open to its special temptations, as the other, in '* Mes- 
merism," is of a highly developed psychical nature 
aspiring ambitiously to work out its inmost potencies 
of spiritual yearning, and to assert over another an un- 
due spiritual aggression ; but instead of wreaking itself 
out selfishly as in the first case, it finds a new channel 
for its love and desire in a final impulsion towards that 
ardent respect for the spiritual rights of the loved 
one which is the highest fruit of love and desire on 
the psychical basis. 

Why is it, do you suppose, that Browning has treated 
of jealousy so slightly, and of male jealousy not at all ? 
For even Guido, in '*The Ring and the Book," who 
pretends to be jealous, is not so. He acts in a way 
he could not if he really were so. Considering how 
the jealous husband is reiterated in Shakespeare, and 
in literature, generally, it would seem that Browning 
must have been conscious of his own abstention 
from this theme. Perhaps he avoided it because he 
desired to treat of love freshly and without imitation; 
perhaps he had the deeper reason that it was not a 
prominent feeling in his own experience — at any 
rate, in its extremer forms of vengefulness against 
either the rival or the one supposed to be fickle ; — and 
so he had, instinctively and naturally, no desire to 
treat that which he could not so well render penetrat- 
ingly. Perhaps violent jealousy is a sentiment that 
belongs more especially to marriage and to that insti- 
tution as it was formerly regulated, or to relations 



PHASES OF ROMANTIC LOVE 53 

where there has been a sense of assured possession on 
which suspicion is afterward cast. However that may- 
be, it is interesting to notice, in this group of poems 
(which excludes, for convenience, the illustrations of 
married life to be discussed later) that the emotions 
excited toward a rival are not intense or malevolent, 
save in *' The Laboratory," and that the treatment 
of it there seems to take it for granted that such an 
emotion is a primitive one. In ** Cristina and 
Monaldeschi," Cristina's jealousy is mixed with a 
nobler rage; in fact she is not represented as desirous 
to do any wrong against her rival, and although she 
might resent the rival's favor with Monaldeschi, she 
is not made to punish him for this merely, but is made 
to resent chiefly the indignity to herself wrought by his 
insincerity and untrustworthiness. Her own pain half 
rises from the consciousness of her own nobility, — the 
loyalty and generousness of heart which has been 
cheated of its deserts. More than all it rises from 
her power, as a queen, to take upon herself the liberty 
of pronouncing sentence and assuaging her sense both 
of degradation and injustice. This power of judging 
and punishing will, one may foresee, recoil upon her 
later, to harden her heart in a triumph of justice, if not 
to torture it with mercy. 

Which of these two poems ** The Laboratory " or 
" Cristina and Monaldeschi " is the more skilful por- 
trayal of jealousy ? And where does each fall in the 
evolutionary scale upon which Browning has built his 
different ideals of love ? Can it be said that the lady 
of ** The Laboratory " has an ideal of love ? What 
should you say Cristina's was ? 

Two opposite ideals of love are designedly con- 
trasted in ''One Way of Love " and ** Another Way 



54 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

of Love." The lover in the first poem sustains the 
pain of feeling that Pauline cares nothing for anything 
he can do to pleasure her, accepts the bitter conclusion 
that no charm can ever reside for her in his expression 
of his love for her, and yet, unrequited as his love is, 
he not only persists in it so far as he himself is con- 
cerned, but iDelieves in the blessedness of such love, 
were it possible under happier conditions. The lover 
of ** Another Way of Love," on the other hand, 
tires of the very perfection of the love conferred upon 
him and even while it is still in the bud doubts whether 
it is not as indiiferent as his own love is. The genuine- 
ness of emotion that the one believes in, the other not 
merely finds tiresome but rates low. The first lover's 
ideal of love exalts the psychical element in it, so that 
he has something left for himself alone to hold to, 
even if his love be not requited. The other behttles 
love, and, seeing in it but a temporary amusement or 
passing gratification, he gets nothing but boredom even 
out of a love that is requited. The retort of the un- 
appreciated beloved one, in commenting upon this 
standpoint, suggests, as the outpouring of Pauline's 
does, that whether love is a gain or not depends rather 
upon what the lover himself thinks love to be, than 
upon what reward it ofl'ers him. The situation, she 
seems to say *' is for you as you feel it. Out of 
the June weather and surfeit of sweetness go you must 
to such artificial shut-within-doors joys as you prefer, 
after all." It is just the June season, as it were, of 
assured love which " tries a man's temper" and shows 
his mettle. As for that love which he does not ap- 
preciate, the assured and not yet fully ripened love and 
beauty for which the lady stands, is there not a po- 
tency retained within that which is capable of devel- 



PHASES OF ROMANTIC LOVE 55 

oping in its own way ? Shall this not grow after its 
own fashion, according to its own nature, and either 
prepare for itself a due revenge, or make itself amends 
for the lack of appreciation accorded it. This sweet- 
ness and redness, of whose eternal sameness the 
lover complains, may thus, without changing, indeed, 
in a s«„nse, yet effect a certain change in the relations 
of the pair which will give the more active love the 
advantage. So it may be said, that in this way June 
may grow new roses to repair the beauty of the 
bower this lover has defaced ; and doing this, what- 
ever effort it may cost her, and in spite of him, this 
richer love of the lady will have accomplished some- 
thing well worth while. And if, following thus the 
law of her own life toward the ideal her love 
sees, her love shall grow on to a delicious perfec- 
tion of fullness and ripeness, she may then be in a 
position to consider whether she shall choose one who 
will be equal to appreciating such a love and adequate 
to give hers a really reciprocal devotion in return, or 
whether, acting upon the bitter experience she has had, 
she will learn how to repel any approach, and using 
her own natural weapons with added skill and an art- 
fulness whose capability this knowledge of him has 
developed, punish and stop any further such depre- 
dations. 

Does your interpretation of this poem agree with 
this one ? What does the poet mean by *' June " — 
the lady or the lady's love, or the opportunity open for 
an ideal love-relation or love-influence ? And what is 
meant by ** June-lightning " ? '*A woman never 
sacrifices herself but once," says Mrs. Linden in Ibsen's 
** Doll's House." Having learned once by such 
bitter experience as the lady of ** Another Way of 



56 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Love" gains or anticipates from a love already giving 
sign of breaking down, she learns hovi^ to be more wary 
the next time, and becomes herself an active foresee- 
ing agent in love, either for good or for evil. So, 
acting on her experience of ** man and of spider *' 
she may use such sudden passion storms as are inci- 
dent to the season of love, as to the season of June, 
in order to clear scores with this nonchalant lover and 
stop any fresh devastation with blasting spirit lightning. 
In love's fruition, in the blossom "June wears on her 
bosom, lie such revenges and such vengeance for 
slights or scorn of a love once indulged in, as that 
which Alphonse Daudet w^arned his sons against w^hen 
he wrote **Sapho" for them. 

How would you sum up the outcome of these two 
little poems, "One Way of Love " and ** Another 
Way of Love " ? The one poem represents a psychical 
and the other a physical effect of love upon the men 
lovers. How is it as to the women ? The lover 
who desires the more is, in the second poem, the 
woman. PauHne we know of merely as the loved 
one, and of her point of view we know only from 
the speaker that she does not love him ; but of the 
standpoint of the lady of " Another Way of Love " we 
know even more than we do of the lover of Pauline. 
In her conscious weighing of the situation and the 
possibilities of this love relation for her, and her action 
in consequence, whether the love may be shaped to 
this or that spiritual result, — in all this there is a 
tendency toward an impersonal expression of what 
love may be made to yield which makes her one of 
the most interesting examples of Browning's exalted 
types of ill-requited lovers. She uses her special ex- 
perience to weigh the worth of love. ** In a Year," 



PHASES OF ROMANTIC LOVE 57 

also, in showing the attitude toward love of an ill- 
requited woman lover, may be instanced as belonging 
to the same class as **Cristina," since its final stanza 
leads to the similar conclusion that unsuccessful love 
is a doorway to spiritual perception of the Infinite 
beyond the Human. 

Mr. Nettleship, however, in the chapter in his vol- 
ume on Browning's Poems on Love, cites ** Another 
Way of Love " among the poems showing the effect 
of successful love upon man, but ignores it as showing 
the effect of ill-requited love upon a woman. Speak- 
ing of poems which relate to the effect upon the 
woman of her love being despised, he says this situa- 
tion "is only twice delineated," namely in **The 
Laboratory" and **In a Year," and he goes on to 
say that ** in the poems which relate to the woman's 
feehngs we notice principally (where her love is 
returned) an absorption of her spirit into that of the 
man, a blind clinging to some idea of God as formed 
through education and association merely, and an ab- 
solute want of originality and of power to look at 
the passion of love in an abstract sense outside the 
woman herself and her lover." 

Is this reference to "In a Year," as evidence of 
"a blind clinging to some idea of God," etc., quite 
just to the conclusion of that poem ? How com- 
pletely is this statement justified by the woman's power 
in ** Another Way of Love," to look at love in the 
abstract ? 

It is desirable to inquire, also, if so sweeping a con- 
clusion is to be made as to the characteristics of all 
Browning's women lovers, whether other poems or 
plays, although not included in this programme, con- 
firm Mr. Netdeship. One play alone, published more 



58 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

than ten years before ** Another Way of Love" and 
most of the love-lyrics here considered, *' The Return 
of the Druses," supplies a good contrary argument in 
the figure of Anael. Her character, in respect es- 
pecially to her sensitive testing of the quality of her 
own and Djabal's love, is made the turning-point of 
the action. Again the capacity for withholding her 
own predilections and testing the love of two men, 
which is shown by Eulalia in ** A Soul's Tragedy " 
(1848), opens Mr. Nettleship's conclusion to further 
question, when he says that ** In none [of the love 
poems] which relate to the women do we observe the 
width of view and intellectual power which are at- 
tributed to the male lover." 

Is Miss Scudder's opposite view better justified than 
Mr. Nettleship's or not when she says : ** Love is 
indeed to all these women supreme ; but that love has 
a broader outlook than the personal and limited hori- 
zon of their relations to their lovers. Intense and pas- 
sionate as this may be, there is in Browning no noble 
woman who does not look beyond, and see in the 
love whereby her own life is ruled, only the type and 
symbol of the broader bond which unites the world. 
The intuitive perception of abstract right, of the 
workings of the moral law, is the innate quahty of all 
Browning's women. Bitter is the suffering when the 
personal love clashes with the universal righteousness. 
. . . Love, narrow and individual in its first and most 
common manifestation, broadens in noble natures into 
the deeper desire for service ; with all true souls it 
rises at last into the link between the human and the 
Divine. . . . Thus inevitably and in simple consist- 
ency Browning gives his supreme reverence to women. 
Because of their moral pre-eminence he attributes to 



PHASES OF ROMANTIC LOVE 59 

them a special office in life, ** at once to inspire and 
to serve." (See ** Womanhood in Modern Poetry," 
Poet-lore, Vol. I., pp. 449-465, October, 1889.) 

Is there more variety of nature and a wider range 
of development indicated for the women than for the 
men in these poems r Note the cruder passion of the 
woman in ** The Laboratory," compared with the cool 
power of judging the value of love shown by the woman 
in '*The Glove," and in *' Another Way of Love," 
and, again, the spiritually refined and utterly devoted 
love of Mary Wollstonecraft and the heroine of ** In a 
Year." Is there as wide a range of difference between 
Porphyria's lover and Cristina's ? 

Is there a tendency, in showing the effects of love 
on men in these poems, to create types whose love is 
so eminently a psychical force and so independent of 
rejection or misfortune that they are unusual elsewhere 
in English literature and distinctive of Browning ? 
The evidence supplied by an oudine study of the 
rejected lover as he or she appears in old ballads and 
novels suggests that it was considered ridiculous and 
weak for a man to persist in loving despite bad treat- 
ment or without return, while for a woman it was 
pathetic and fine. Compare the love of Chaucer's 
patient Griselda, and the Nut-brown Maid of that 
ballad, with Romeo's love for Rosalind, Juliet's prede- 
cessor, in Shakespeare, and in Brooke's '* Palace of 
Pleasure," the story Shakespeare followed. 

*< There was little room in the position of woman 
in knighdy society for a recognition of any other than 
a physical interest in love and a physical end, until, 
through higher ideals of the demands of the individual 
soul there had been developed a higher plane of life. 
The speakers in Browning's * One Way of Love,' 



6o BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

'The Last Ride Together,' and ' Cristina,' above all 
Valence in *Colombe's Birthday,' represent a modern 
ideal of the psychical worth of passion, — an ideal 
developed from the feudal notions of love through 
greatly changed social conditions." (See remarks on 
this subject in Poet-lore ^ Vol. II. , pp. 37-38, Jan- 
uary, 1890.) 

On the other hand, in the more sophisticated social 
life of Southern Europe at the earliest dawn of the 
Renaissance period, ideals of romantic love were held 
by the choicer spirits among the Neoplatonists, and 
notably by Dante, which bear an affinity to those 
expressed by Browning's exalted lovers. From the 
conception o'i love given to the world by Plato the 
finer side of the romantic love of early chivalry grew, 
in the Middle Ages, through the admixture of a new 
idea of the worth both of woman and the spiritual in 
humanity. This fresh admixture was due in part to 
Christianity and the influence upon civilization of the 
Northern races and their more normal habits of life ; 
and, through this admixture, romantic love seems to 
have been brought, as Mr. Cooke says, **toits highest 
expression in Dante and Petrarch, and revived in a 
modernized form by Browning. ' ' Plato * ' imaginatively 
proves that love is the great mediator, the eternal 
reconciler, between severed human souls . . . yearned 
for with the soul's utmost intensity, because it is an 
anticipation, albeit indistinct, of an ideal union. . . . 
With the later poets, especially of the Anthology, we 
come upon some lyric ... so unlike all that has gone 
before in the Greek conception of woman, and the 
love between the sexes, that we cannot but see it is a 
new thing. . . It came to its perfection in the trou- 
badours, in chivalry, and in Dante . . . The mediaeval 



PHASES OF ROMANTIC LOVE 6l 

interpreters of romantic love turned to Plato as the 
great teacher of its doctrines and spirit ; but they 
made the recipient of the love the source of inspiration 
rather than the lover himself, as with Plato. . . . Dante 
said that Beatrice had revealed to him all virtue and all 
wisdom. Petrarch blessed the happy moment which 
directed his heart to Laura, for she led him to the path of 
virtue." (See " Browning's Interpretation of Romantic 
Love, as compared with that of Plato, Dante, and 
Petrarch," Poet-lore, Vol. VL, pp. 225-238.) 

In speaking of Plato's idea of love, although point- 
ing out that it was the love of man for man rather than 
the love of man and woman which concerned him, 
Mr. Cooke refers to the parable in *' the Symposium " 
(see Jowett's ** Plato's Dialogues," Vol. I., pp. 483- 
486), relating how man was originally created in the 
shape of a ball with four hands and feet and two faces, 
and later was split in half to make the two sexes, — 
hence love being the desire of man for unity and the 
whole ; but this story, it should be remembered, is 
told in character by Aristophanes, and the sexual 
point of view it involves is opposed by Socrates, whose 
teaching may be abridged as follows for comparison 
with Dante and Browning : — 

Diotima, say Socrates, taught him that "love maybe- 
described generally as the love of the everlasting pos- 
session of the good " or the love of and birth in beauty. 
*«A11 men are bringing to the birth in their bodies 
and in their souls," because, **to the mortal, birth is 
a sort of eternity and immortahty . . . and all men 
will necessarily desire immortality together with good, 
if love is of the everlasting possession of the good." 
She explained to him, further, how the mortal body 
partakes of immortality by *' undergoing a perpetual 



62 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

process of loss and reparation," the *' old worn-out 
mortality leaving another new and similar one behind," 
but the " immortal partakes of immortality in another 
way. . . . Creative souls — for there are men who 
are more creative in their souls than in their bodies — 
conceive that which is proper for the soul to conceive." 
(See Jowett's *' Dialogues of Plato: The Symposium," 
Vol. I., passages quoted, pp. 498-501.) Again in the 
''Phaedrus" (Vol. I., pp. 557, 558, 570), love is 
described by Socrates as a madness or ecstasy, but 
of two kinds, one produced by "human infirmity, the 
other by a divine release from the ordinary ways of 
men," and this sort of ecstasy belongs to the immor- 
tal soul which is self-moving, never failing of self or 
of motion, self-motion being " the very idea and es- 
sence of the soul. . . . The body which is moved 
from without is soulless; but that which is moved 
from within has a soul . . . without beginning and im- 
mortal." In this highest madness of the soul, the 
sight of the beauty of earth is a transport of recollec- 
tion of true beauty, beheld in another world. Who- 
ever feels it ** would like to fly away, but cannot." He 
is "like a bird fluttering and looking upward and care- 
less of the world below," the object of his affections 
being chosen according to the desire of his soul for a 
soul that has had a like nature and reverenced the 
same god, to whom their recollection clings, of whom 
**they become possessed," and '* receive his character 
and ways as far as man can participate in God." 

The lover of ** Cristina " holds a like resistless 
faith in a remembered twinship of soul with the be- 
loved one ; and the lover of*' Evelyn Hope " seeks 
satisfaction in a similar mystical realm of spiritual 
being. 



PHASES OF ROMANTIC LOVE 63 

<* Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli," is an expression 
of the outgrowth from platonic love toward that 
warmer, thoroughly romantic, and yet exaltedly de- 
voted love which belongs peculiarly to the chivalric 
vein of the troubadour lover ; and others of Browning's 
romantic poems exemplify, with historic fidelity, this 
especial phase of romantic love. (See Helen Leah 
Reed's ** Browning's Pictures of Chivalry," Poet-lorCy 
Vol. XL, pp. 588-601.) 

Summing up the ground passed over, together with 
the few poems of this series still remaining to be sur- 
veyed, it may be noticed that the whole has naturally 
arranged itself in three general groups : the first, cov- 
ering the poems already named and discussed, which 
express the effect of a personal experience, whether 
happy or not, upon the lover. The second group 
expresses the lover's judgment of an experience, less 
recent, his thought lingering reflectively over it and 
weighing its value not merely to himself, or to his soul, 
or to the beloved one, as in the first group, but in re- 
lation to outside considerations. ** A Light Woman," 
** Dis Aliter Visum," "Confessions," *« Youth and 
Art," «* Bifurcation," " Rosny," deal thus with the 
relation of a love-experience to the moral or conven- 
tional opinions of the outside world. The third 
group — embracing '* A Pretty Woman," " Num- 
pholeptos," "Solomon and Balkis," "Adam, Lilith, 
and Eve," ** Which ? " — expresses in a more abstract 
way, as if in a parable embodying a veiled but intended 
meaning, some comment on love in general, or on 
typical love relations between men and women. 

In '*A Light Woman" the speaker has ventured 
to interfere in the relations of his friend with an ob- 
jectionable woman from whom it seemed desirable to 



64 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

rescue him, and the meddler's success only leads him 
to bitter reflections on his own presumption and the 
fact that he himself is the least to be commended of 
the three. Is the ideal of love to be drawn from this 
poem that love belongs essentially to the two souls 
concerned and should not be subject to the offhand 
condemnation and interference of those outside the 
relationship ? And observe whether such a conception 
agrees with the ideals imphed as to the opinions of the 
outer world in the other poems of this second group. 
In **Dis Aliter Visum" and ** Youth and Art" 
the worthlessness of external views of the socially fit 
way to act in life are arraigned by the two speakers as 
leading to less good moral results than the indulgence 
of love despite social unfitness. The argument against 
suppression of the impulse to love seems to be that 
there is a vitality about obedience to a genuine emotion 
of love compared with vvhich conventional inconven- 
ience is not only petty but nullifying, since the nature 
schools itself in deference to such cautions only to 
grow insincere and fall a prey to degenerate relations 
v^hich are destructive of spiritual impetus, not only 
for the characters of the two first concerned but for 
those with whom these become involved. In ** Bi- 
furcation " a similar question is posed between love 
and a course thought good socially, and this question 
is left open. The intimation with which it closes is, 
says Dr. Brinton (see ** Browning on Unconventional 
Relations," Poet-lore, Yo\. IV., May, 1892, pp. 266- 
271), ** that self-denial may be a greater sin than 
self-indulgence." In "Confessions" a dying man 
maintains the joy and sweetness of an old love episode 
against the ascetic notion of it as a dangerous and 
doubtful inclination of the flesh. Finally, in ** Rosny," 



PHASES OF ROMANTIC LOVE 6^ 

the desire to gratify public opinion with the fame of a 
warrior-hero leads love to sacrifice his life to it. 

So in all the poems of this group there is an antithe- 
sis between love and social opinion, and all tend toward 
the conclusion that love is closer to spirituality, and is to 
the individuals concerned in each case, therefore, a bet- 
ter guide than the external opinions of the social world. 

In tracing the ideals of love embodied in these 
poems through the last group, ask whether, in these 
most critical and quizzical of Browning's love poems, 
there is any disagreement with the foregoing group. 
In *'A Pretty Woman" the conclusion expressed is 
even so far respectful of the individual nature and the 
right to follow its own bent that its incapacity to 
love deeply, although accompanied by an exasperating 
facility to attract love, is acknowledged, and neither 
irritation nor forcible possession is justified, but rather 
such mere appreciation as that shown a rose one ad- 
mires but leaves to itself unplucked and unsullied. 
** Numpholeptos " expresses the devotion of the male 
lover to the woman he has made an idol of. He 
bends himself to the performance of the superhuman de- 
mands this unreal woman-shape lays upon him. And 
the slavishness of the man to the hopeless and stultify- 
ing action which she is incapable of entering into or 
really rewarding is the legitimate result, the poem 
suggests, of this sort of fetichism in the relations of 
men and women. It is ignorance of actual life 
which makes her exacting, and it is his worship which 
makes her artificially queen it over him as his moral 
superior. The ideal of love, insinuated symbolically, 
through the unsatisfactoriness of the relationship be- 
tween this lover and his task-mistress, which the poem 
satirically exposes, is probably that, in place of this 
5 



66 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

sort of fantastic, sentimental, unbalanced ensnarement 
of the man by the woman, a more perfectly reciprocal 
and healthy relationship may grow up between them 
when they have become equally independent and self- 
poised by actual contact with the real problems of life 
and hard-won triumphs over them. (See Camberwell 
Brownijig, Vol. IX., Notes, p. 301, for Browning's 
explanation of his meaning ; also, passage on ** Num- 
pholeptos " in ** The Ideals of Womanhood held by 
Browning," Poet-lore^ Vol. IX., No. 3, p. 399.) 
Mrs. Glazebrook (see ** Browning Studies," pp. 
195-203) writes of the allegory of the nymph in 
this poem as suggesting three alternatives : " She may 
be just some one individual woman, and the poem a 
simple love story told in allegorical form. . . . But the 
whole tone, style, and effect of the poem seem to me 
to forbid this narrow interpretation. . . . Browning 
tells stories of this kind simply, dramatically, circum- 
stantially. . . . Secondly, the nymph may be the 
personification of Philosophy. And this I believe her 
to be in part. But I think she is more. There must 
be some good reason for that outburst at the end, 
which makes so much of her being a woman — of her 
* She-intelligence,' etc. . . . And so I am brought 
to the third alternadve, which is the one I hold. The 
nymph is the ideal woman — a modern Beatrice or 
Laura," dwelling "in a carefully guarded abode of 
peace and virtue," sending forth the man to make his 
way in life's careers, always exacting victory for him 
in these, " but not the stains and scars of the victor." 
These her untried experience of life does not permit 
her to understand. So also ** Solomon and Balkis " 
satirizes the male vanity and the feminine love of 
allurement under which sensuality may mask as love. 



PHASES OF ROMANTIC LOVE 6^ 

" Adam, Lilith, and Eve " exemplifies the typical man 
in a similar mutually self-fooling relationship with the 
two typical classes of women, Lilith, the proud but 
loyal-hearted Brunhild type. Eve, the softer but wilier 
Gudrun type. (See Mrs. Corson's Note, however. 
Poet-lore, Vol. VIII., pp. 278-280, for an interpre- 
tation diametrically opposite to this and to the one 
given in the digest of this poem, Cambe?~well Browm?ig, 
Notes, Vol. XL, p. 327.) Finally, ** Which ? " in 
presenting dramatically the ideals of love held by three 
different women seems to sum up this topic of Ideals 
of Love, by indicating that the most essential require- 
ment in a lover is that his love shall have reference 
to one alone. 

Queries for Discussion. — To what extent are 
Browning's love-poems dramatic, and to what extent 
does there exist an agreement among them which 
enables one to judge what ideals of love guided him ? 

Is Mr. Stedman justified in speaking of Browning's 
love lyrics as " attesting the boundless liberty and sov- 
ereignty of love," so that their ** moral is that . . . 
the greatest sin does not consist in giving rein to our 
desires, but in stinting or too prudently repressing 
them" ? (See ** Victorian Poets," pp. 322, 329.) 
If there is truth in this, what limitation of its ap- 
plication, generally, should be made on the score 
of the poet's satire in his more quizzical poems of 
spurious love-relations and of his exemplifications 
throughout his work of developed love as essentially 
spiritual ? 

Is it an advance, morally and socially, that the men 
lovers should be shown to be capable of such disinter- 
ested love as it was formerly supposed only women 
were likely to express? 



68 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

What elements of the love celebrated, typically, by 
Plato and Dante belong to Browning's most exalted 
lovers, and wherein has he added a strain of his own ? 
Is his conception of the value of love to the soul of 
the lover more in accord, on the whole, wnth Dante's 
reverence for woman, or with Plato's lonely regard 
for the spiritual and individual element of love which 
the Greek philosophy identified with the lover instead 
of with the beloved one ? 

Is the ideal of love held by Browning's exalted 
lovers as social in its aim as Mr. Nettleship supposes 
when he writes as follows : — 

** Should we consider the conclusions of Browning's 
male lovers as one whole, what use can we make of 
them, when thus blended ? If we believe with 
Cristina's lover, that we are here in this life, as dis- 
tinguished from all other lives before and after, for the 
purpose of loving somebody ; with Evelyn Hope's 
lover, that, having fulfilled that condition here, we 
shall surely enjoy it to the full in some future state ; 
and with the lover in * The Last Ride,' that it is 
possible that love enjoyed may be, not only one fulfil- 
ment of a future state, but that fruition which is more 
glorious and all-satisfying than any other, we do but 
intensify powers of which we are assuredly possessed, 
and by the very nature of our hopes for their exercise, 
elevate and purify our desires. Finding ourselves 
possessed of certain instincts, whose development is 
the passion of love, and which claim exercise in one 
way or another ; . . . finding that not only as repro- 
ductive agents are these instincts in themselves of incal- 
culable importance, but, moreover, that in their exercise 
for that purpose they expand our sympathetic powers, 
and nourish and extend the power of action of our other 



PHASES OF ROMANTIC LOVE 69 

attributes ; we do but take another step, to learn first 
that perhaps the passion is but a symbol of the infinite 
yearning of a first cause, a type of that boundless love 
which, wedded to boundless power, has been imag- 
ined as the all-ruHng Deity ; and then that this very 
passion, infinitely extended, may be the means of our 
helping untold millions as God's vice-gerents in other 
existences. . . . Tf we believe that no love which 
has honestly sprung up in any man's breast can go 
unrewarded altogether, lest thereby so much power be 
lost in the machine of the universe; if we thus dare 
to weld together the thoughts expressed in these three 
poems, . . . who shall say whether the little germ 
of one man's love truly begun, for one woman, may 
not in some far-away life arise, an infinite passion, by 
whose glowing impulse the two shall mount upwards ? 
And if for many lives he and she toil on, failing, 
learning, and accumulating force . . . surely at last, 
when . . . division and duality are things of forgot- 
ten ages, the perfect human entity, taking throne at the 
foot of God, will wield the sceptre of power, instinct 
with the spirit of love, over the millions who are still 
toiling and cHmbing, and in the end the whole world 
will blend in the inconceivable splendor of a star that 
blazes through an ever present eternity ! ' ' 

How does this way of regarding love accord with 
Browning's? Should you say that these poems 
placed emphasis on the spiritual side of love, regarding 
it as essentially emotional and transcendent ? And is 
this view too much influenced by the idea of repro- 
duction and too biassed by notions of institutional, even 
monarchical, forms of government to be perfectly m 
harmony with the pcet ? Does love as Browning 
conceives of it fulfil itself through personalitv, in order 



70 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

ultimately to establish the highest consciousness of the 
individual soul, and therefore, instead of blending all 
souls into likeness and unity, merely, as Mr. Nettleship 
supposes, does it, rather, branch into complexity and 
differentiation, in order to reahze new power and make 
new sympathies possible ? 

Is it likelier that greater injustice will be done the 
poet by defining his ideal of love and giving it a pre- 
scribed goal, than by regarding his love poems as an 
artist's attempts to embody human ideals of an evolu- 
tionary sort having a relative rather than an absolute 
value, and expressing a general tendency rather than 
a specific aim ? Might his position toward his own 
poems be that of one who held that although an abso- 
lute ideal of perfect love would be desirable for man 
to aspire toward, yet that it would be undesirable for 
any one man to limit it for others or himself, no one 
nature's experience and aspiration absorbing all the 
possibilities, and each such experience and aspiration 
being but a relative manifestation or partial mirroring 
of the imagined Infinite — ** Infinite Passion and the 
pain of finite hearts that yearn " ? 

Is romantic love to Browning a renunciation or a 
realization of personality ? Is self-sacrifice or self- 
satisfaction, soul-development or social progress its 
master impulse ? But are such ends as these opposed 
or supplementary ? Does self-sacrifice lead to soul 
development ; or does it cramp the active energies of 
the spiritual nature and induce a passivity unfriendly 
to progress ? Does self-satisfaction, on the other 
hand, — the wreaking of oneself on one's desires, — 
tend to satiate and, in a sense, debauch the energy, 
giving it the restlessness of over-activity ? If in either 
way danger lies, where may the remedy be found ? 



PHASES OF ROMANTIC LOVE 71 

Is the solution a middle-way or a reference of the 
question as to conduct, in each case, to the dictates of 
the individual soul in relation to its special environ- 
ment ? Does soul development depend upon social 
progress the more, or social progress create the better 
conditions for soul development ? 

III. Topic for Paper, Classzvorky or Private 
Study. — The Poetic Workmanship. 

Hints : — It is interesting to notice that the four- 
stressed measure predominates in this series of poems. 
At least twenty-two of the thirty-nine poems are 
written in this way, and perhaps one other poem, 
*' Crisdna," should be added to the number, for it 
is ordinarily so scanned. Whether metrical facility 
or poverty of ability as a metricist is betokened by the 
evidence that this four-stressed measure is so often used, 
may be in part determined by a study of the differen- 
tiation the poet has made in this kind of line in these 
poems, and of how he has manipulated it to meet the 
dramatic or emotional effects attained. 

** Garden Fancies " is half taken up with description 
of a past scene in a garden, and yet it is all the time 
more directly presentative of the describer. While 
he talks we see that he is pushing open the wicket 
gate, and passing successively past the shrub, the box 
along one side of the gravel walk, the phlox, the roses 
in a row, the flower with the Spanish name, — all of 
them recalling to him incidents of the past scene when 
he walked through the garden with the lady who then 
made all these incidents enchanting and who now, 
as he catches sight of her, farther on, makes him hurry 
off toward her, flinging back, as he goes, after the 
expressive lines 41 and 42, cautions to the flower and 
taunts to the roses expressive of this lady's superior 



72 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

charm. The state of emotional sensibility belonging to 
this lover comes out in the metaphors. Human feeling 
is attributed to the hinges, which wince and murmur, 
the buds ** pout " and ** flout" and ** turn up their 
faces"; and notice how ** sunshine," ** sound," 
''speech," ** song," and *' beauties " are spoken of 
as capable of human action, of Hngering, sleeping, wak- 
ing, and fleeing. Referring to line 20 in the "Letters 
of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett," Eliza- 
beth Barrett speaks of ** that beautiful and musical use 
of the word * meandering ' which I never remember 
having seen used in relation to sound before." The 
general tone of the poem is one of smooth grace and 
delicate sentiment. Observe how the metrical form is 
related to this effect. Although the four-stressed Hne 
opens with an accented syllable for the first four lines, 
and, similarly, at the beginning of other stanzas, es- 
pecially V. and vi., where there is an outburst of 
impulsive rapture, the lines, as a rule, open with unac- 
cented syllables, and often, as in lines 7 and 8, for 

example, — "the poor snail," "and forget it the 

leaves,' ' — an extra unstressed syllable lengthens the 
iambic foot. 

In "The Laboratory," the four-stressed Hne is 
often begun with a stressed syllable followed by one, 
and sometimes two, unstressed, the whole giving 
an entirely opposite effect to that of "The Flower's 
Name," an effect of abrupt excitabihty rather than 
smooth sensibility, of fierceness instead of sentiment. 
The way the metre serves the emotion it expresses, 
so that the right rhetorical emphasis is in general agree- 
ment with the rhythm, has been noticed particularly 
by Mr. William Allingham. He points the second 
stanza for reading, thus : — 



PHASES OF ROMANTIC LOVE 73 



*^ He is with ker, and they knojv that / know 

Where they are, what they do : they believe my tears flow 
While t/iev laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear 
Empty church, to pray God in for t/iem ! I am here.'''' 

This calls attention to the strong antitheses made 
between the pronouns, the tears, the laughter, the 
church where the lovers think the lady is, the labora- 
tory where she really is. Notice, also, the alternation 
of stressed and unstressed or less stressed syllables as 
here marked. How far does the sense-emphasis coin- 
cide with the metrical stress ? Scan the other stanzas, 
marking the metrical accents in the same way, and 
inquire whether the lines of this poem are more often 
opened with a stressed or weak syllable, and if the 
different effect of the poem as a whole is due to the 
rhythm being essentially opposite to that of the pre- 
ceding poem, if it is made up chiefly, that is, of what 
are called trochaic and dactylic feet (feet of two and 
three syllables opening with an accented and followed 
by unaccented syllables); or whether it is made up 
chiefly of what are called iambic and anapaestic feet 
(feet of two and three syllables opening with light 
and followed by stressed syllables), and if the different 
effect of the whole is due, therefore, simply to the 
fact that there are in this poem a greater number of 
lines than in the preceding, which open with a stress. 
In the case of such Hnes as 9 it might be held that, 
although it begins with a strong syllable followed by two 
weak ones, this foot is not a dactyl, but, as frequently 
in iambic verse, that the usual opening weak syllable 

is dropped, and that after " Grind a," a new and reg- 



74 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

ular iambic foot, «* way moist," follows, the rest of the 
line being made up of two anapssts. 

For the sake of unifying the metre throughout 
would it be better to scan such lines thus, or to ac- 
count them as exceptional ? Or is Mr. Arthur Beatty 
right in classing the poem as trochaic and dactylic ? 
In his valuable little pamphlet on ** Browning's Verse 
Form," he instances it as an example of the trochaic 
logaoedic, meaning by this that it is written in the 
free metre, called logaoedic by the Greek prosodists, in 
which extra syllables were added at will to the foot, 
dactyls being blent with trochees in the variety called 
trochaic, and anapaests with iambs in that called iambic, 
in a way ** combining the unfettered movement of the 
noblest prose with the true poetic cadence." 

The rhyme scheme is simple, the stanza being made 
up of two couplets. Are the double rhymes effective ? 
Notice the power of speech attributed to the drop of 
poison (line 31). Is it appropriate that the meta- 
phors should be rare ? Had the lady an eye for color ? 
What examples of eifective alliteration does the poem 
afford ? 

**The Confessional" is the simplest of poems as 
to metaphor and diction, and most regular as to the 
rhythm, which is markedly that of a steadily iambic 
four-stressed line. Are there any elisions of the weak 
syllables of the foot at the beginning of the lines ? What 
is the rhyme scheme ? Are there any double rhymes, 
such as the **tightly" **whitely," *'smithy" 
** prithee," of ** The Laboratory"? What similes 
are there, and how do these and the bare style suit the 
speaker ? 

The verse in ** Cristina" may be classed either as 
four or eight stressed. Each pair of lines, as printed 



PHASES OF ROMANTIC LOVE 75 

in the apparently eight-line stanza, really constitutes 
but one poetic line or verse, each stanza being com- 
posed of two couplets ending in double rhymes through- 
out the poem. It may be questioned whether it 
might not be better often to scan each line as having 
three stresses, for example : — 



** There are flashes struck from midnights 
There are fire-flames noondays kindle," etc. 

instead of 



" There are flashes struck from midnights, 
There are fire-flames noondays kindle," etc. 

The second mode seems too regular to express the im- 
patient half-injured scornfulness of mood natural to the 
speaker, who, according to the first mode, would fling 
headlong past his opening words towards his words 
of main emphasis. But read the stanzas in the two 
ways, in the first, letting the voice pass lightly on to 
"flashes" and "fire" and there marking the stress; 
in the second, emphasizing the first and then every al- 
ternate syllable ; and judge for yourself. This first 
mode would make each line open with a three-syl- 
labled foot of two weak, followed by a strong syllable, 
that is, with an anapsst, the remainder of the line being 
a two-syllabled foot, that is, iambic, and the verse, as a 
whole, a good example of the iambic logaoedic metre. 
The regular iambic rhythm of the four-stressed 
verse of ** The Lost Mistress," the simple alternate 
rhymed quatrain and quiet diction fit the dismissed 
lover's gray mood. What he is saying of the eaves 
and vine-buds intimates that he is standing in the door- 
way bidding good-bye. What pertinence is there in 



76 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

his saying that ** the red turns gray " ? Does this strike 
him as sadly Hke his own budding hope ? 

Is ** Evelyn Hope" an unquestionable example of 
dactylic and trochaic metre ? Here, as in the other poems, 
the lines stressed at the opening are expressive of an 
agitated emotional outburst, and the lines opening with 
weak syllables signify the relief of a quieter mood. 
The last stanza, for example, in effect very serenely 
solemn, is characterized by an iambic rhythm through- 
out. Notice the rhyme and stanza scheme. Are there 
any double rhymes ? Observe the nature of the similes 
and allusions. 

Summarize the differences between the remaining 
poems of four-stressed lines as to variety of rhythm, and 
new kinds of stanza and rhymes, for example, ** Two 
in the Campagna," closes its stanza of five lines with 
a shorter line of three stresses which rhymes with the 
first and third. *' Another Way of Love," while 
each stanza closes with triplet verses having four stresses, 
has eight lines preceding with four rhymes elaborately 
interlinked. *' A Pretty Woman " has a double 
rhymed couplet of two stressed lines between its 
double and sometimes triple rhyming first and fourth 
lines. **In a Year" has in its eight-hned stanza but 
two lines, which are four-stressed ; the others have two 
stresses, except the first, which has three. The songs 
of ** In a Gondola " frequently have short lines of two 
stresses amid the normal four-stressed verse of this 
poem, and at its close there is a transition for the last 
seventeen lines to five stresses in the line, marking 
noticeably the change of mood with the change of 
metrical movement, as the lovers return, disembark, 
and the man is surprised and stabbed. Each quatrain 
of **A Light Woman" closes with a three-stressed 



PHASES OF ROMANTIC LOVE -Jf 

line which knits up the stanza ; and *' Confessions " is 
similarly constructed, so far as its quatrains, in iambic 
metre closing with a three-stressed line, are concerned, 
yet it seems, to secure its more humorous and crisp effect 
not merely by the character and similes of the story, 
which should be observed, but also by there being fewer 
syllables, generally, to the line. One of the main traits 
distinguishing ** The Last Ride Together " from the 
many other poems having a four-stressed iambic line is 
the carefully interlocked rhyme of the eleven-lined 
stanza. It serves to add an element of rhythm closely 
corresponding to 'the movement of thought and emo- 
tion as vvell as a suggestion of horseback-riding. Com- 
pare with other poems of Br-owning's in which 
horseback-riding is in the rhythmic background : 
*'The Ride from Ghent," "Thro' the Metidja," 
*« Boot, Saddle, to Horse and Away." '« It is not pos- 
sible to be thinking mainly of one's horse, what he is 
doing, how he is going when it is * Our Last Ride 
Together,' mine and hers ! " comments Mr. Bulkeley 
(see " The Reasonable Rhythm of some of Brown- 
ing's Poems," London Browning Society Papers). 
** Though our hearts must throb with our horses' motion, 
and our thoughts fall into their rhythmic rise and fall, 
yet the deeper feelings reign here, of love, regret, hope, 
and it is not always consciously, though ever there, 
that the horses canter under us ; and yet, since thus 
we are together, would we than this animal cadence 
wish for a better heaven ? " Notice that the stanza is 
made up of two sets of paired couplets, the second set 
having an additional line repeating its second rhyme, 
both sets being woven into one piece by the fifth and 
the last lines rhyming. How do the diction, allu- 
sions, and metaphors correspond with the nature of 



78 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

this lover and reveal his culture and character in com- 
parison, for instance, with those of " Porphyria's 
Lover ; " and what special qualities of its own has the 
four-stressed line of that poem ? Is the four-stressed 
verse of "Too Late" given an effect quite different 
from all the preceding poems, and how ? Notice the 
rough yet vivid metaphors (see lines 21-24, S^-S^* 
43-48, 75 and 76, 100-102, I lo-l 12, and so on) and 
what they intimate of the kind of man this lover was. 
«« Cristina and Monaldeschi," "Dis Aliter Visum," 
<* Mary Wollstonecraft," '* Adam, Lilith, and Eve," 
** Which?" and **Rosny," the remaining poems of 
four-stressed lines, have various interesting points of dif- 
ferentiation : either in the preponderance of lines with 
the stress at the opening syllable, as in the first and last 
poems, in both cases suiting the tragic intensity ; or in 
the preponderance of lines opening with a weak syl- 
lable, as in the other poems ; or in the lengthening of 
the foot, and shortening of some of the lines to three- 
stressed lines, as in ** Adam, Lilith, and Eve ; " in add- 
ing a two-stressed refrain, as in *' Rosny ; " or else in 
the varied rhyme and stanza structure ; and in the use 
of double rhymes. 

Of the remainder of this series of love poems, aside 
from those discussed in the following programme, 
notice that ** A Woman's Last Word," **Love among 
the Ruins," *' A Lover's Quarrel," '* Mesmerism," 
"The Glove," "Youth and Art," '^A Likeness," 
may be grouped together on the basis of all having a 
three-stressed line. "Solomon and Balkis " is marked 
by a six-stressed line. 

Concerning the congruity existing between the metre 
and the matter of "A Woman's Last Word," Dr. 
Brinton writes (see " The New Poetic Form as shown 



PHASES OF ROMANTIC LOVE 79 

in Browning," Vol. II., pp. 234-246, May, 1890): 
** In the short lines . . . we seem to feel the broken, 
hysterical sobbing of a woman. The primary rhythm 
is reinforced by the unusual combination of rhyme and 
repetition, — * more, Love,' * before. Love,' etc., while 
the secondary rhythm is carried on by an adroit 
disposition of consonantal tone-colors, contrasted at 
what we may call the close of each sob, — that is, 
carried through, but not beyond the shorter line. The 
whole poem is a model effort to bring poetic form into 
rhythmical co-ordination with the natural physical 
expression of the emotion it describes." And he 
calls attention to *' the difference in treatment of a 
quite contrasted mental state, as shown in that ex- 
quisite composition * Love among the Ruins. ' The 
emotion is that of a confident lover walking leisurely 
at eve to a trysting spot among the ruins where 
his girl awaits him. Precisely the same measure is 
used for the shorter verse ; but, by a lengthening of the 
alternate line, and a different adjustment of the secon- 
dary rhythm, the whole effect is not merely altered 
but inverted. Instead of being a reflection of the 
rhythm of broken sobs, it is that of long and calm in- 
spirations with alternate rests." 

An interesting variation from- the agile double rhymes 
that characterize *'The Glove," should not , be over- 
looked. When the lady speaks to Ronsard so earnestly, 
these change into single rhymes, recurring afterwards 
to their normal dexterity. Elizabeth Barrett wrote 
Browning, in the ** Letters " : *« What a noble lion 
you give us, too, with the * flash on his forehead ' and 
* leagues in the desert already ' as we look . . . and 
with what a ' curious felicity ' you turn the subject 
'glove' to another use and strike De Lorge's blow 



8o BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

back on him with it, in the last paragraph of your 
story ! And the versification ! And the lady's speech 
— so calm and proud — yet a little bitter." 

*' Mesmerism " should not be passed over without 
nodcing especially the suspension of the sense and 
rhythm through stanza after stanza, and how^ this 
brings out the steady willing of the speaker. Where 
do the dashes stop at the ends of the stanzas, and how 
does the alternation of suspension and pause fit the 
relief and the strain ? 

The-five-stressed Hne offers the common ground for 
classing together ** Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli," 
*' Bifurcation," "Numpholeptos," and ** Inappre- 
hensiveness." Each of these smaller groups may be 
passed in review in the same way as the larger group 
of poems with a four-stressed line, directing observa- 
tion to the following points : ( i ) the preponderance 
of lines opening with an accented or an unaccented 
syllable; (2) the preponderant number of syllables 
to each foot ; (3) the dramadc or musical effect of 
ehsions of weak syllables, or of the shift from strong 
to weak; (4) the rhyme and stanza plan; (5) the 
nature of the metaphors and allusions and their fitness ; 
(6) whether the poem in part or as a whole is symbolic. 

** Numpholeptos " illustrates what is meant by this 
sixth point. A symbolical suggestion pervades the 
poem that the nymph is an ideal woman who is the 
idol of man instead of a human reality. The imagery 
is the poetic means by which this is implied. This 
imagery of a central light with colored light rays is 
an inverse application of Dante's supernal light that 
guides him heavenward, in the centre of which the poet 
of chivalric love placed Beatrice, the **lady round 
whom splendors meet in homage." (See **Vita 



PHASES OF ROMANTIC LOVE 8i 

Nuova," xliii. ; ** Purgatorio," xxix., ']'] foil. ; ** Par- 
adise," XXX.). Browning de-theologizes this meta- 
phor. He makes it human by insinuating the effect it 
might have on man to be led here in his life on earth 
by such a guardian queen outward from the centre of 
such light, instead of inward toward it in the pursuit of 
angelic perfection in heaven. Dr. Berdoe, however, 
in " Browning's Science in * Numpholeptos' " {^Poet- 
lore,^^ Vol.11., pp. 617-624, Dec. 1890), after refer- 
ring to Dante's imagery, cites Browning's ** use of the 
figure drawn from the constitution of white Hght " in 
"The Ring and the Book," i. 1354, '' Sordello," v. 
605, and "Fifine," 897, to show that Browning was in 
love with this light metaphor, and in " Numpholeptos" 
built up a complete poem on this scientific foundation. 

Queries for Discussion. — Are Browning's free 
rhythm and often unadorned diction to be considered 
as appropriate dramatically or deficient poetically ? 

Are his lines and metres that are frequently stressed 
at the beginning to be censured when not in accord 
with his normal line and metre, or are they to be 
taken as meant to serve the purpose either of varying 
and enriching the harmony of the v^rse or of in- 
dicating a change of feeling ? 

Do the double rhymes in these poems betoken either 
a certain fluency or playfulness of mood ; and does the 
poet indulge in them when they are dramatically in- 
appropriate to the speaker or do not suit the effect ? 

Is the scientific or the hterary symbolism of the 
hght image in "Numpholeptos" most in keeping with 
the meaning of the poem ? 

Which is more frequent in these poems, metaphor, 
simile, allegory, or symbolism t 



A Group of Love Lyrics 

Page 

Vol. Text Note 
Lyrics from " Pippa Passes " : " Give her but a 

least excuse to love me " i 208 258 

"You'll love me yet" i 225 

** Meeting at Night" iv 29 367 

" Parting at Morning " iv 30 367 

Song : " Nay but you who do not love her " . iv 30 367 

** My Star" iv 87 377 

"Misconceptions" iv 106 378 

" One Way of Love " iv 109 379 

" Love in a Life " iv 116 379 

" Life in a Love " iv 117 379 

" Natural Magic" ix 208 300 

"Magical Nature" ix 209 300 

Prologue: " Two Poets of Croisic " .... x 330 304 

" Wanting is — What?" xi 227 323 

" Never the Time and the Place " . . . . xi 285 337 

Lyric: "Eagle" xii 4 305 

"Melon-Seller" xii 6 307 

Shah Abbas" xii 10 308 

The Family" xii 14 309 



Epi 



-'Mirab Shah 



as 3' 



'A Camel Driver" xii 30 313 

' Two Camels " xii 34 314 

' Plot Culture " xii 40 315 

'A Pillar at Sebzevar " xii 45 316 

logue : " Ferishtah's Fancies " .... xii 61 319 

"Now" xii 200 363 

"Poetics" xii 201 363 

" Summum Bonum " xii 202 364 

"A Pearl, a Girl " xii 202 364 

Sonnet: " Eyes, calm beside thee" . . . . xii 269 380 

I. Topic for Pdpe?\ Classwork, or Private Study. 
— -The Story and Mood. 



A GROUP OF LOVE LYRICS 83 

Hints : — For the story see notes to Camberwell 
Browning as given above. Observe how many of 
the poems may be said to have stories, or at least to 
imply a situation, and how many of them are simply 
the expression of the lover's moods. In the first two 
lyrics from " Pippa Passes" the lovers long for the 
love of the lady of their affection. The page, how- 
ever, feels how hopeless it is that his lady should ever 
have any need of him, while in the other one there is 
the feeling of certainty that the seed of love has been 
sown and must reach its fruition some time, and 
that not even death can prevent it. In ** Song " the 
love is so intense that the lover can find no adequate 
words of praise, himself, but would have others gaze 
upon his lady and express their admiration in praise, 
while he keeps silent. In " My Star," the feeling is 
somewhat of a contrast to that in "Song." Here is 
a lover who instead of desiring all others to praise his 
beloved, is happy because he alone can appreciate her, 
because to him only has she revealed her beauty of 
soul. This makes her peculiarly his and others are 
welcome to praise those more brilliant who make a 
universal impression. Which do you consider repre- 
sents the deeper of these two phases of feeling ? 

In *' Misconceptions " there is reflected the mood of 
a lover who has been regarded merely as a stepping 
stone to a true and abiding love, and has thus been 
left by his mistress to pine for a good which was not 
his. He does not rail at the perfidy of the inconstant 
fair, but seems magnanimously to consider that he had 
mistaken her graciousness toward him for love and had 
grown ecstatic upon insufficient grounds. The lover 
in *' One Way of Love " is one who, in spite of the 
fact that he has spent his whole life in perfecting his 



84 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

love for the lady's sake and at the end receives no 
return for it, is yet able to bless all who win the 
heaven of a perfect love. ** Love in a Life" and 
"Life in a Love" : In the first, the lover seems to 
consider that unless he wins the lady of his heart, love 
must ever escape him, while in the second the lover 
feels that once having found the ideal, he has realized 
the full force of love ; and through the whole of his 
life his love must follow it whether the lady recipro- 
cates or not. Which of these lovers has the deeper 
nature, the one whose love does not blossom into full 
life without reciprocation, or the one whose love is suf- 
ficient for his life without the reciprocal love of the 
loved one .? Do you think of any other interpretation 
of the two moods expressed in these poems ? Might 
there be a more symbolical way of looking at them, as 
indicated in the notes to the poems in the Camberwell 
Brozvningy in which the poems would stand as 
symbols of an abstract ideal love ? 

In " Natural Magic " the lover expresses, by means 
of symboHsm drawn from magic, the sudden trans- 
formation in his life upon the advent of the beloved 
one. In *« Magical Nature" the lover's mood is 
such that he defies time to lessen his admiration of his 
lady, declaring that her beauty has for him the perma- 
nence of a jewel rather than that of a flower which 
time might fray. In the prologue to *' Two Poets of 
Croisic " the mood is the same as that in ** Magical 
Nature" — namely, the power of love to transform 
life from a dull and meaningless existence into one 
henceforth full of joy and gladness. ** Wandng is — 
What ?" shows the same thing, only in this there is 
the desire and need for a love that has never come, 
and while in *' Apparitions " all was dark until love 



A GROUP OF LOVE LYRICS ' 85 

came, in the last the world is recognized as being 
beautiful but lacking the touch which will give mean- 
ing to its beauty. Which do you think the more likely 
interpretation, this or the one referred to in the Notes f 
(See Camberwell Brownifig, Vol. XL, p. 227.) 

In ** Never the Time and the Place " we have the 
mood of a lover who is chafing under restraints imposed 
by conditions, but who yet looks forward to reunion 
with the beloved one, even if it be not until after death. 

Observe that there is but one of these lyrics wherein 
expression is given to a mood indicating that there are 
things of more importance in life than love, namely 
the second of the pair *^ Meeting at Night" and 
"Parting at Morning." Whether it be interpreted 
as spoken by the man or the woman, it shows that to 
this lover love is only an incident of his life. (For 
discussion as to the meaning of these lyrics see Poet- 
lore, Vol. VII., 1895, April, May, and June-July.) 
C. R. Corson writes : **The Arcanum of the Garden 
of Eden has been revealed to them, the need of 
woman to man, the need of man to woman. It is 
this revelation that makes him find a path of gold in 
all his endeavors to provide for her ; it has centupled 
his physical energies, nothing now too hard for him to 
achieve ; all that her heart craves she shall have 
through him." Another writer says: "Don't you 
read it like this ? ' Round the cape of a sudden came 
the sea ' (the man is speaking) ' and the sun looked over 
the mountain's rim — and straight was a path of gold 
for him '(the sun) * And the need of a world of men 
for me ' (the man who must go back to the world of 
action he left last night). How plain! " Then there 
is the third possibility that the woman is speaking, and 
that she realizes that there is a path of glory in the 



86 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

world of men for him in which she cannot share and 
for which she longs in order that she might companion 
him on his life's way. Which of these interpretations 
do you think fits best, and which represents the most 
exalted point of view ? 

Queries for Discussiofi. — In comparison with love- 
lyrics by other poets should you say that these were 
noticeable for their lack of descriptions of personal 
beauty ? and do you feel that in consequence the in- 
tensity of the expression is lessened ? Or is there rather 
a greater depth and sincerity of love implied in such 
lyrics, because of their emphasis upon a perfect soul- 
union as the basis of love where the love is reciprocal, 
and a sense of the immeasurable worth of love to the 
one who loves whether it calls out any return or not ? 

Which of these lyrics reaches upon the whole the 
most exalted expression of love, or are most of them 
equally exalted in spirit, the differences of mood being 
due to different conditions ? 

The lyrics which are interspersed in ** Ferisl:tah's 
Fancies" differ from those already considered, because 
they may be grouped together in a series, each one in 
the series giving expression to a mood growing out of 
the lives of two souls already united in a deep and true 
love. (For hints on these lyrics, see Notes, Camberwell 
Browning, Vol. XII., pp. 305, 307, 308, 309, 311, 
3'3> S^Sj 316, 319.) ''Round us the wild creatures" 
says a word against the tendency such a soul-wedded 
pair might have to become completely absorbed in each 
other, and forget they had any duties to humanity. 
** Wish no word unspoken " expresses the feeling that 
even injustice from the loved one is precious. In 
" You groped your way across my room," the feeling 
expressed is, that under the enlightening influence of a 



A GROUP OF LOVE LYRICS 87 

true and constant love, all discords that enter into life 
will be but a ruffling of the surface of life's deep current, 
soon to disappear. In »* Man I am and man would be," 
the lover declares that he asks nothing more in this 
life than his own human perception of the human 
beauty and goodness in the one he loves. In 
**Sothe head aches" he declares that the bodily 
weakness of the loved one is compensated for in her 
strength of mind and soul — greater than his, though he 
is physically so strong. In ** When I vexed you," he 
welcomes chidings for small faults, because he knows 
in his own inmost consciousness that he has greater fail- 
ings, she does not suspect, which deserve far sterner 
chidings than she ever gives. In ** Once I saw a 
chemist," he declares that through the love he has 
known upon earth, he is able to conceive of heaven, 
which, however, cannot transcend the bliss of earth 
except in the fact that in heaven the bliss will last. 
A reminiscent mood is also reflected in ** Verse 
making" showing that love had been with him so 
perfectly spontaneous and certain that without and 
misgivings or calculations as to the results, he imme- 
diately ** told his love." In ** Not with my soul, 
love," he expresses the desire that their union shall 
be complete, emotionally as well as spiritually. In 
*' Ask not one least word of praise " his mood is that 
of one to whom speech in praise of the loved one is 
not sufficiently subtle for the expression of his inmost 
soul — a touch reveals his soul better. 

This series of glimpses into a life hallowed by a 
perfect love is rounded out by the Epilogue to ** Fer- 
ishtah's Fancies," which reveals the fact that the loved 
one is dead, and now haunting fears and doubts be- 
set the man, that all the glory and beauty he has seen 



88 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

in the world, owes its existence entirely to the love 
which has surrounded him in a halo of light. Is it 
possible to read this series of lyrics connectedly with- 
out feeling that they grew out of the poet's own ex- 
perience in life ? 

Queries for Discussion. — How does this set of lyrics 
compare with the others in the centering of the thought 
upon the spiritual rather than upon the material aspects 
of life and love ? 

Though these lyrics are not at all didactic, could 
you draw a lofty ideal of living from them ? 

In the remaining lyrics, point out any similarities of 
mood with those already considered. 

Taken as a whole, do you find a remarkable unity of 
sentiment in all these lyrics, the differences being merely 
different phases of the same underlying sentiment ? 

Do these lyrics, on account of the unity of sentiment, 
give the impression of being more purely subjective 
than Browning's work usually is ? 

II. Topic for Paper, Classworky or Private Study. 
— Symbolism and Workmanship of the Lyrics. 

Hi?its : — Of the two lyrics from *' Pippa Passes," 
** Give her but a least excuse to love me " is the more 
dramatic in form. In the two short stanzas a very 
definite picture is presented of the Queen, the page, and 
the maiden. Observe that this is done without any de- 
scription whatever of any of them. How is it done, 
then ? How much of the situation do you learn from 
the page's song alone .? From the one word given to 
the Queen, we are able to conjure up a picture of her, 
attentive to, and evidently touched by the page's 
song, and this impression is made all the more strong 
by contrast with the maiden, whose few words show 
her careless and indifi-erent, not supposing the Queen 



A GROUP OF LOVE LYRICS 89 

to be interested in the page's song. Notice that the 
latter part of each stanza is enclosed in parentheses, 
the form being indirect speech instead of direct — 
that is, the name of the person speaking is mentioned, 
and what they say is introduced by " said " in one 
place, "cried " in another, and so on. If it were 
not for this should we be able to guess at the person- 
ality of the boy who is singing and the person to 
whom he sings ? 

Does the second stanza express a phase of the 
mood any more intense than the first ? Do you find 
any figures of speech in this poem ? The line 
** Merely an earth to cleave, a sea to part," without 
being imagery in the ordinary sense, is a symbolical 
way of saying that nothing would be too arduous for 
him to undertake for his lady. 

Who is Kate the Queen ? (See lines following the 
lyric, and Camberwell Brownings Notes, V^ol. I., p. 

"58-) 

The rhythm of this poem is very irregular, the 
number of feet and the kind of feet varying with each 
line, for example, the first line of the first stanza has 
five stresses with the unaccented syllable following the 
accented one ; the second, two feet, each of which is 
a single accented syllable followed by a pause in the 
place of an unaccented syllable. The third line 
might be scanned as having either five or six stresses. 
In the first instance, ** can " and *' this " would both 
be treated as short syllables; in the second, '*How " 
would be treated as an accented syllable followed by 
a pause in place of an unaccented syllable, and ** can " 
would have an accent. Does it give the more musi- 
cal effect to scan this line as having five stresses ? In 
deciding a point like this would it be best to be guided 



90 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

by the musical effect ? The fourth Hne again has five 
stresses, but they are preceded instead of followed by 
the unaccented syllables. The sixth line might be 
scanned as having six stresses, in which case "to" 
would have an accent. Would it not, however, 
give a more musical effect to make **to" and the 
following syllable «'e" both short and so give the 
line only five stresses ? The next hne has three 
stresses, the first followed by a pause, the other two 
preceded by the unaccented syllables. The seventh 
line has four, the accented syllable sometimes fol- 
lowed by two, sometimes by one unaccented sylla- 
ble, and with an extra unaccented syllable at the 
beginning of the line. The eighth has four, pre- 
ceded by two and sometimes by one unaccented sylla- 
ble. The last has three, followed sometimes by one, 
sometimes by two unaccented syllables. The second 
stanza has the same distribution of stresses to the 
lines, except that the third and sixth lines of the stanza 
both have to be scanned with six stresses. For this 
reason it may be that the poet meant the third and 
sixth lines of the first stanza to be scanned with six 
stresses, so making the two stanzas counterparts of 
each other. There is some little variation in the 
placing of the short syllables. Point these out. 
Notice that the rhymes are sometimes double and 
sometimes single. Do you find this poem any the 
less musical for its irregularity and complexity ? 

The second of the lyrics from *' Pippa Passes" is 
far simpler in construction, but is a trifle more meta- 
phorical in its expression. Point out which of the 
lines express the feeling directly and which express it 
by means of figures. The rhythm and rhymes are 
also simple, the lines alternating between four and 



A GROUP OF LOVE LYRICS 91 

three stresses, the rhymes also alternating. What slight 
departures are there from this regularity ? 

In «* Meeting at Night" the first stanza paints in a 
very few words the evening landscape. The language 
is perfectly straightforward and simple, breaking only , 
once into the simile of *' the waves that leap in fiery 
ringlets." There is also sufficient action in it to indi- 
cate the situation ; in the second stanza the scene is 
sketched still further but loses itself in the climax of 
the situation. Is there any imagery at all in the 
second stanza } The background of sea-waves seems 
to be suggested in this poem by the arrangement of 
the rhymes, the crest of the w^ave being in the middle 
of the stanza, where the couplet occurs. In each 
stanza there is also a climax of motion in these two 
lines which dies away in the first in the quenching of 
the speed of the boat and in the second in the 
silent beating of two hearts. The lines all have four 
stresses preceded sometimes by one, sometimes by 
two unaccented syllables. Is there any regularity in 
the alternations of one and two short syllables ? There 
are two places where two accented syllables come 
together, in line i and line 10. In the first instance, 
** gray sea," it seems to add breadth to the picture 
because of the longer time it takes to say it, while in 
the second instance emphasis is added. 

Point out the variations from the first two stanzas 
in the third, ** Parting at Morning." 

In *'Song" there is hardly any imagery. The 
lover emphasizes his feeling through his admiration of 
the beloved one's golden tresses, an emblem of her 
nature, which he declares is pure gold. Notice also that 
this lyric is not addressed to his lady, but to the people 
who do not love her, and whom he challenges to 



92 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

witness her worth. The lines have four stresses, the 
first four in stanza i having the unaccented syllable 
following the accented one, and the last two having 
the unaccented syllable followed by the accented one. 
This results in giving the stanza four double rhymes 
and two single rhymes. What variations do you ob- 
serve in the second stanza ? 

In ** My Star," the expression all through is sym- 
bolical, the beloved one being compared with a star, and 
this star being further particularized as like an angled 
spar. For full explanation of this simile see notes to 
the poem in Camberwell Brozvn'mg, Vol. IV., p. 377. 
What other things is the Star compared with? In 
each of these similes a different aspect of the beloved 
one's nature is pictured. Is there a mixed metaphor 
in the last hne ? 

The first eight lines of this poem have two stresses 
and the last five have four stresses. In the first and 
third the accented syllables are at the beginning and 
the end of the line. In the second and fourth, the 
first accented syllable is preceded by two and the 
second accented syllable is preceded by one unaccented 
syllable. This produces a pleasing secondary rhythm. 
The four following lines are accented in the same way. 
In the other lines the accented syllables are sometimes 
preceded by one and sometimes by two unaccented 
syllables. Is there any regularity in this irregularity 
forming a secondary rhythm similar to that noticed in 
the shorter lines ? Notice the distribution of the 
rhymes and especially how the shorter lines and the 
longer lines are linked together by a rhyme in 
common. 

** Misconceptions" resembles " My Star" in the 
symbolism of the language. The thought is pre- 



A GROUP OF LOVE LYRICS 93 

sented in the first stanza symbolically, and in the 
second one the same thought is interpreted. The 
lines in this poem have three stresses, except the last 
two^ which have four. The first line begins with a 
stress and is followed with two short syllables, the 
second accented syllable is also followed by two unac- 
cented syllables, but the third by only one, these two 
making the rhyme. Are there any variations from these 
arrangements of accents in any of the other four stressed 
lines ? Line 6 has four stresses, the accented syllable be- 
ing followed by two unaccented syllables except at the 
end of the line, where it is followed by only one un- 
accented syllable. Is there any variation from this in 
the other longer lines ? The rhymes in this poem 
are all double with only two to each stanza. 

In **One Way of Love," each stanza gives a little 
different phase of the thought with different symbolism. 
Roses the lover had strewn for a month, merely with 
the chance that they might take his lady's eye. Then 
for many months he had striven to perfect his music, 
hoping she might ask him to sing. Then, in the last 
stanza, the climax of devotion is reached and at the 
same time the climax of renunciation. Is the lan- 
guage in this poem at all figurative .? The rhythm is 
regular almost all through, the only breaks being in 
the fifth line of each stanza, where the line begins and 
ends with an accented syllable. Also the sixth line of 
the third stanza begins with an accent. The rhymes 
are also regular, every stanza being made up of three 
rhymed couplets. 

In ** Love in a Life " and ** Life in a Love " is the 
expression more symboHstic than realistic } Point out 
any examples you may find of figures of speech in 
these two lyrics. Notice that the rhythm of these is 



94 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

very irregular. The first three lines each have two 
stresses occurring in different places in each line ; in 
I, the first and last syllables have the stress ; in 2, the 
second and last syllables have the stress ; in 3, the 
third and sixth have the stress. Notice the variety 
in the distribution of short syllables in these three 
lines, resulting in which one having the most syllables? 
All the remaining lines have fiDur stresses. In 4, the 
syllables with a stress are the first, third, sixth, and 
ninth ; in 5, the first, fourth, seventh, ninth ; in 6, 
the first, fourth, seventh, ninth ; in 7, the third, sixth, 
ninth, eleventh ; in 8, the second, fifth, eighth, 
eleventh. What variations in the distribution of 
short syllables result from this ? Do you- discover 
any recurring rhythm in the irregularities either within 
the stanza or in comparing the two stanzas with each 
other ? The rhyme scheme is also quite complicated, 
the first three lines rhyming respectively with the last 
three, the first two being single and the third a double 
rhyme. Then, the two remaining lines in the middle 
of the stanza rhyme together with a double rhyme. 
With so much irregularity of rhythm it might be sup- 
posed that the effect would be that of prose rather 
than poetry, but it will be found when read that the 
rhythm is smooth and harmonious. ** Life in a Love " 
has still other irregularities. It begins and ends with 
three lines rhymed together, each of which has but 
one stress. All the remaining lines have four stresses 
distributed as follows: 4, second, fourth, sixth, eighth 
syllables ; 5, second, fifth, eighth, ninth ; 6, first, 
third, sixth, eighth ; 7, third, fifth, eighth, tenth ; 
8, second, fifth, seventh, ninth ; 9, second, fifth, 
eighth, tenth; 10, third, fifth, eighth, tenth; 11, 
second, fifth, eighth, tenth; 12, third, fifth, seventh. 



A GROUP OF LOVE LYRICS 95 

ninth; 13, second, fourth, sixth, ninth i i/}., second, 
fifth, eighth, tenth; 15, third, fifth, seventh, ninth; 
16, second, fourth, seventh, ninth ; 17, second, fourth, 
seventh, ninth ; 18, second, fifth, seventh, ninth ; 19, 
third, fifth, eighth, tenth. The rhymes are arranged 
in groups of four, the first and second group have the 
first and fourth hnes rhyming together, and the second 
and third ; the two remaining groups have the first and 
third, second and fourth lines rhyming. 

" Natural Magic " is another example of the symbol 
being presented in the first stanza, and the feeling it 
illustrates in the second stanza. Aside from this larger 
symbolism, is the language of the second stanza entirely 
reahstic, or is the thought in this presented by means 
of poetic figures ? The verse in this has three stresses 
to the first, second, and last lines of the stanzas, and 
four to all the other lines. The general structure of 
the stanzas is that of an accented syllable preceded by 
two unaccented syllables, but the variations are numer- 
ous ; for example, in line i, the first syllable has an 
accent and the last has not; in lines 2 and 3, the first 
accented syllable is preceded by only one unaccented 
syllable ; the rest of the line is regular. Line 4 is 
regular, but 5, again, has only one unaccented syllable 
at the beginning. 6 has an extra unaccented syllable 
to end with. 7 and 8 both begin with only one 
unaccented syllable and end with an extra unaccented, 
and 9 is like i except that it, too, begins with one 
unaccented syllable. Point out any variations from 
this you may find in the second stanza. The rhymes 
in this poem have quite a complex arrangement, — 
I and 6 rhyme together with a double rhyme, and 
between these is a quatrain of which the first and 
fourth rhyme together and the second and third are 



96 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

single. Then line 6 forms with the remaining three 
another quatrain of which the first and fourth, second 
and third lines rhyme, all double rhymes. 

In '« Magical Nature," how is the thought pre- 
sented, in poetic figures or realistically ? Observe 
that rhyme and rhythm are both very simple in this 
little poem, though even here there is some variation. 
For example, in the first stanza, lines i and 3 have 
six stresses, and 2 and 4 have seven ; while in the 
second stanza, i and 4 have six, and 2 and 3 seven. 
In the second stanza, also, there is a single rhyme instead 
of double rhymes between the second and fourth lines. 
What irregularity in the metre results from this ? Is 
there any other irregularity in the metre ? 

The little lyric which makes the prologue to *'Two 
Poets of Croisic," presents the thought in three differ- 
ent symbols, each more intense than the preceding 
one, and only in the very last line in the simple phrase 
**That was thy face" does it become apparent that it 
is a love lyric. The rhythm consists of three and two 
stresses. Line i has three, on the first, fourth, and 
sixth syllables; 2, on the first and fourth ; 3, on the 
first, fourth, and sixth ; and 4, on the first and fourth. 
The other stanzas are exactly the same, but it is to be 
noticed that the quantity of the unaccented syllable 
"starved" is so much greater than the other unac- 
cented syllables in the first stanza that it has a very 
strong secondary accent, — so much of a one, indeed, 
that if the form were not set by the other stanzas, it 
would seem more natural to scan this line as if it had 
four instead of three stresses. In this case the line 
would consist of two feet made up of an unaccented 
syllable between two accented syllables. Also in the 
third line of the third stanza, *' God's" has a strong 



A GROUP OF LOVE LYRICS 97 

secondary accent, so strong that the line taken alone 
could just as well be scanned as having three stresses 
preceded by three unaccented syllables. Yet the rhythm 
of the whole poem is better preserved by scanning it 
like the other three stressed lines. The rhyme scheme 
here is perfectly simple. 

In " Wanting is — What : " the symbolism is so mys- 
tically expressed that opinions differ as to the interpreta- 
tion, as we have already seen. Aside from its larger 
symbolism, is the language of the poem figurative or 
metaphorical ? The rhythm is interesting from the 
regularity of the irregularity. The first line of two 
stresses, with two unaccented syllables between, sets 
the pattern for the rest of the stanza, every line of 
which, through line i i, begins with the same arrange- 
ment of syllables. From line 5, through line 10, 
two more stresses are added, with sometimes one, 
sometimes two unaccented syllables preceding. Point 
out these variations, also the lines where unaccented 
syllables are added at the end making double rhymes. 
The last three lines vary from the other short lines in 
what way r Observe the arrangement of rhymes. 

What peculiarities of rhyme and rhythm do you 
observe in *' Never the Time and the Place " farther 
than that the lines vary in the number of stresses, 
some having four, some three, some two .? 

Query for Discussion. — Is the beauty of these lyrics 
due almost entirely to the variety and harmony of 
their rhythmical music, or is it helped on by alliteration 
and choice of words ? 

On the whole, the ** Ferishtah's Fancies " lyrics are 

realistic in language, though there are exceptions. 

Point out all the poetic symbols and images you may 

observe. The rhythm of these will be found to be 

7 



98 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

more regular than that of the lyrics so far considered. 
*' Round us the wild creatures " has six stresses, ex- 
cept lines 4 and i 2, which have seven. The unac- 
cented syllables follow the accented ones except at 
the end of the lines. The only other variation to be 
noted is the changing of places, in line i , of the second 
accented and unaccented syllables. '* Wish no word 
unspoken " has lines of six and seven stresses, 2, 5, 
and 6 having seven, the relation of the accented to 
the unaccented syllables being the same as in the pre- 
ceding lyric. " You groped your way across my 
room ' ' has seven stresses, the unaccented syllable 
preceding the accented syllable. Do you observe any 
irregularities at all in this ? " Man I am and man 
would be " has eight stresses, with the unaccented 
syllable following the accented syllable. *' So the 
head aches" has four stresses to the line, with consid- 
erable variation in the placing of the unaccented syl- 
lables. For example, in line i the first, fourth, 
seventh, ninth have the accent ; in 2 the first, fourth, 
sixth, ninth ; in 3 the third, fifth, eighth, tenth ; 
in 4 the first, fourth, sixth, eighth. Show what 
other differences there are in the other stanzas. 
** When I vexed you" has three stresses, preceded 
sometimes by one, sometimes by two unaccented 
syllables. Observe also that there is sometimes an 
extra unaccented syllable at the end of the Hne. 
** Once I saw a chemist " has six stresses to all the 
lines but the last of each stanza, which has seven. 
The unaccented syllables follow the accented ones, 
with a few exceptions to be noted. ** Verse-making 
was least of my virtues " has five stresses, with some- 
times two, sometimes one unaccented syllable preced- 
ing. Line 2 is perhaps the hardest line in the poem 



A GROUP OF LOVE LYRICS 99 

to scan, but it will be found to run quite smoothly 
if the accents are placed upon the third, sixth, ninth, 
twelfth, and fifteenth syllables. Notice that in this 
line there are two unaccented syllables to every ac- 
cented one. Are there any other lines similar to this 
one ? There is a slight variation in the printing of 
this poem in the nine-volume and latest two-volume 
English edition. The dwiberw ell Browning follows 
the latter, and prints the phrases ** And made verse " 
and ** I made love " as part of the fourth line in each 
stanza. Printed so, it simply adds another foot to the 
line, which then has an internal rhyme. But in the nine- 
volume English edition, these phrases are printed in 
a line by themselves, and in that case each syllable 
would have a stress. Which seems to you the prefer- 
able way of printing and scanning it \ 

" Not with my soul, love " has five stresses, usually 
preceded by a short syllable, though many of the lines 
begin with a stress which is followed by a short syl- 
lable, thus bringing two short syllables together ; see 
lines I, 2, 3, 5, 9, 10. The last line has but two 
stresses, on the first and last syllables. *« Ask not one 
least word of praise" has four stresses, with unac- 
cented syllable following, the line ending, however, 
with an accent. Do you note any irregularines at all 
in this poem ? 

The ** Epilogue " varies in the number of stresses, 
for example, in the first stanza line i has five, fol- 
lowed by an unaccented syllable; 2 has six, 3 has 
six, 4 has seven. Of the other stanzas, the second 
has: line i,six; 2, six ; 3, six; 4, seven. Third, 
fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh stanzas : i, six ; 2, seven; 
3, six ; 4, seven. 

Notice the various effects in the rhyming of these 



lOO BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

lyrics and compare with the preceding group in regard 
to their complexity. 

Of the remaining lyrics, '* Now " has four stresses 
to the line. ** Poetics " is somewhat irregular. In 
the first stanza, the stresses, in line i, fall on the first, 
fourth, sixth, eighth, tenth syllables ; in 2, on the 
first, fourth, sixth, eighth, tenth, twelfth, fourteenth ; 
in 3, on the first, third, fifth, seventh, ninth, eleventh ; 
in 4, on the first, third, fifth, seventh, ninth, eleventh, 
and thirteenth. In the second stanza, the stresses fall, 
in line i, on the first, third, fifth, seventh, ninth, sylla- 
bles ; in 2, on the first, third, fifth, seventh, ninth, 
eleventh syllables ; in 3, on the first, third, fifth, 
seventh, ninth, eleventh ; in 4, on the first, third, fifth, 
seventh, ninth, eleventh. '* Summum Bonum " has 
lines of five stresses preceded by two unaccented syl- 
lables, and lines of three stresses with sometimes one, 
sometimes two unaccented syllables between. '* A 
Pearl, a Girl " has four stresses, sometimes preceded by 
one, sometimes by two unaccented syllables. Point 
out the variations. 

The sonnet form is used only occasionally by 
Browning, and from the irregularity of the stresses in 
** Eyes, calm beside thee," it is evident that his muse 
was restive under its bonds. It is true that there are 
fourteen lines and each line has five stresses, but the 
short syllables are varied in the poet's usual free 
manner, and the rhymes in the octette do not follow 
the prescribed order at all. Point out how it differs 
from the usual sonnet form. 

Queries for Discussion. — Where the symbolism 
in these poems is drawn from nature is it vague and 
general rather than special ? 

What is its character when drawn from science ? 



A GROUP OF LOVE LYRICS lOi 

How many different kinds of symbolism do you 
observe, and which kind predominates ? 

From this study of the workmanship of these lyrics 
should you conclude that Browning could not write a 
lyric, as some critics have said, or that his lyrics really 
have a more organic music than most other poets have 
been able to compass ? 

Does this result from the fact that the liberties he 
takes in the distribution of accented and unaccented 
syllables make it possible for him to combine fre- 
quently the sense accent with the rhythmical accent 
at the same time that he escapes the wrenched accents 
so likely to occur in strict rhythm ? If he has any 
wrenched accents point out whether they are upon 
weak syllables or whether strong syllables are left with- 
out an accent, and discuss which produce the more 
unpleasant effect. 

Could it be said that, since a sense accent never falls 
on a weak syllable, a rhythmical accent on a weak 
syllable is more unpleasant than no accent on a strong 
syllable, when it has, as frequently, no sense accent ? 



Portraits of Husbands and Wives 

Page 

Vol. Text Note 

" By the Fireside " iv 87 377 

" Any Wife to Any Husband " iv 98 378 

" My Last Duchess " iv 143 384 

<< The Flight of the Duchess" iv 219 393 

<' The Statue and the Bust " iv 265 396 

** James Lee's Wife " v 132 303 

" Fifine at the Fair " ix 68 288 

"A Forgiveness" ix 227 303 

" Bad Dreams" xii 204 365 

" Beatrice Signorini " xii 229 370 

Compare with these, Charles and Polyxena in *< King Victor 
and King Charles," i. 237, 3275 " Andrea del Sarto," v, 36, 
284 5 Guido and Pompilia, Pietro and Violante, in " The Ring and 
the Book," vi., vii. 5 the new Alkestis and Admetos, in Conclusion 

to '< Balaustion's Adventure," viii. 80, 289 5 " Doctor ," ix. 

213, 321 ; " Adam, Lilith, and Eve," ix. 246, 327 ; the duke and 
the druggist's daughter in ** Parleying with Daniel Bartoli," xii. 
89, 326. 

I. Topic for Papery Classwork, or Private Study. 
— The Situation and the Characters. 

Hhits : — The story each of these poems has to tell 
is, how the various characters are placed with reference 
to the different situations they face. Their ways of 
meeting these situations reveal their nature. For 
general summaries of the subject-matter, see Camber- 
zvell Browni?igy Notes, as cited above. 

The husband in ** By the Fireside" imagines a 
situation he will have to meet when he is an old 



HUSBANDS AND WIVES 103 

man left alone by the younger generation. The 
situation he anticipates is sketched realistically in 
stanzas i. and ii., so that we see him, by the fire, 
steadily turning the pages of an old Greek book ; hear 
the shutters flap in the November wind-skurries, 
and the youngsters cautiously planning to steal out 
while he is so absorbed. But stanza i. prepares us to 
understand that this is only the frame of an external 
sort of portrait. It is the soul's ripe autumnal hue, 
and the music of her voices with which he is planning 
to solace himself in life's November. It is an inward 
portrait of himself that he will draw, in the act of 
mentally realizing what his love for his wife and hers 
for him have meant. 

The Greek he pictures himself as deep in (stanza 
iii.) is, as he explains in stanzas iv. and v., but an 
outside frame for an inside archway, a network of 
impressions and recollections opening a wide vista 
through his hfe from age to youth and Italy. He 
passes on through this to live his love over again, 
beginning more externally in descriptive first impres- 
sions of out-door scenes enjoyed together in Italy 
(stanzas vii. to xx.); then more and more internally 
penetrating in the remainder of the poem to the signi- 
ficance to them of their joint emotions, to be realized 
in old age, as these first impressions of the earlier part 
of their day out-doors together were ripened for them, 
at second view, on their return, in the evening. 
Notice that stanzas xxi.-xxx. introduce this second 
division of more introspective reminiscence with an 
apostrophe to his wife and the blest old age to which 
such youth must lead. Then stanza xxxi. takes up 
the theme, dropped in stanza xx., of the bird there 
spoken of, with a noonday picture of it sdlled by the 



I04 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

menace of two hawks. Stanza xxxii. rapidly takes 
his memory to afternoon, and the growing silence and 
significance of evening. Stanzas xxxiii.— xlvi. review 
the home-return and its feelings ; xlvii. presents the 
climax of emotion ; xlviii. links this with the out-door 
influence ; and, finally, xhx.-liii. sum up this love 
experience as the potency for the distinctive fruitage 
of his soul henceforth. 

Discuss further the descriptions, allusions, and anal- 
ogies employed. Do you think he was thinking, 
literally, of a learned book, or of that as a symbol of 
the volume of experiences age collects } Is the book 
really, then, to be all prose, no verse ; or is he play- 
fully seeing himself ** as others see him," especially 
as children look upon an old man, as if for him the 
romance of life is over, while he means to show it is 
enhanced ? For information as to localities, the relation 
of these with Mr. and Mrs. Browning, allusions, etc., 
see Camberwell Brownmg. What idea does the 
poem give you of the man personally, as to his sensi- 
bility, observation of nature, culture, and character } 
What do you gather as to the woman } 

«*Any Wife to Any Husband" is a counterpart 
portrait of a wife who, like the husband of *' By the 
Fireside," cleaves to the love she has experienced with 
only the more intensity when life is ripe. The situa- 
tion she is facing — her approaching death — comes 
out in the first stanza (line 6). She apprehends, 
although her husband would be equally absorbed in his 
love for her could she live, that now he will not be. 
The inner situation implied in this, considered with 
reference to her own and her husband's character, 
occupies her outpouring throughout the poem. 
Wherein her husband will fail in devotion comes out 



HUSBANDS AND WIVES 105 

how, in lines 7-24 ? Does she claim that his stead- 
fastness is due merely to her personal charm ? Still, 
her desire that his fidelity perfectly correspond with 
her own ideal of love for them both bursts out again 
in lines 25-33. In lines 34-48 what praise does she 
again give him, and what does this tell you of his 
character ? Finally (lines 49—78), she expresses 
just what the further point of view is which she 
exclaims against with passion again (79-102), uphold- 
ing her own point of view, in stanzas xviii. and xix., 
maintaining that he could do as much or more, in the 
two following stanzas ; until with the last half-line of 
the poem she rises to a climax of desire for this and 
doubt of it. How far does the poem reveal the 
character of this wife and husband ? Is it a less objec- 
tive portrait of the two than that given in **By the 
Fireside" ? Why ? 

What reason can you give to justify the guess that 
the first poem is a sort of dramatization of Browning 
as a husband, and his point of vievv^ ; and the second a 
sort of dramatization of Mrs. Browning, not neces- 
sarily as his own wife, but as a type of such a 
woman's point of view ? 

** My Last Duchess," '* The Flight of the 
Duchess," and ''The Statue and the Bust " belong 
together in portraying husbands and wives whose 
environment is not modern, as that of the two fore- 
going poems is. They are all almost medieval. 
Even the portraits of Guido and Pompilia in ** The 
Ring and the Book " are appropriate to a period when 
the legal or generally accepted views of a husband's 
authority over a wife had become somewhat more 
questionable. 

'* The Flight of the Duchess," though it probably 



lo6 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

belongs in its setting to a later time and a northern 
country, Germany, ranks with the first two Italian 
poems because of the mediaevalism affected by the 
husband, against which the Duchess revolted. The 
situation, accordingly, in all these poems is alike, 
being largely created by exactions of the husband 
enforced in a way foreign to the conditions allowable 
between modern husbands and wives. The situations 
sketched lie, therefore, in a more physical plane than 
in the first two poems. In *' My Last Duchess," 
for example, instead of a situation created as in ** By 
the Fireside" out of the husband's claim that the 
love experience of youth is spiritually fulfilled in old 
age, or out of the wife's claim, in the following poem, 
that only absolute fidelity after the death of the wife 
suits the ideal beauty of a supreme love, is a situation 
so far removed from these that it consists in a hus- 
band's arranging with an envov for a successor to the 
wife he had ordered should die. All that is involved 
in this situation comes out in the course of this interview. 
While exhibiting his last wife's portrait to this envoy, 
this husband shows her nature and his own, how ? 
Notice that you gather at once, since he speaks of the 
painting as that of his last Duchess ** looking as if she 
were alive," that she is now dead ; also, that he is a 
collector and appreciator of art ; that the two men are 
standing, since he invites the visitor to sit, etc. ; that 
he is sensitive now, and has been, to the admiration his 
wife's beauty excites, since he warns his visitor, **by 
design," that the artist was a monk, and then launches 
out in details of resentment against the Duchess for 
being of so gladsome a temperament that she showed 
interest in more than himself; that he was so proud 
and taciturn in his demands that to order her death 



HUSBANDS AND WIVES 107 

was the only way to maintain them. Observe the 
threatening effect, after this explanation, of the repe- 
tition of his first words, ** There she stands as if 
alive." How do you learn that the visitor has been 
sitting during all the talk ? What other picturesque 
details come out in the remaining lines to complete the 
husband's character and illustrate the situation ? 

The situation and the characters ot the husband and 
wife in ** The Flight of the Duchess " agree in 
important respects with those in the preceding poem. 
Wherein do they differ, and in what are they alike ? 
The situation is made clear by one speaker, also ; 
but he is not a prominent personage in the story, 
as in the other poem; and observe how many more 
personages are involved in the story, and how many 
more details and side-lights can and do come out, 
because an observer, this huntsman, closely allied to 
the household, is telling the tale to a trusted friend. 

Show how the situation is presented, so that the 
country, the father and the mother of the present 
Duke, the circumstances that led to the son's affecta- 
tion of mediasvalism, the conventionalisms he intro- 
duced, the wife he chose, the way she came to the 
castle, her nature and looks, her husband's notions of 
wifely propriety, their effect on the bride, and finally 
the surprising events that followed are related with 
familiarity and vividness: the hunt ; the coming of 
the Gipsies, the peculiar character and habits of 
the Northland Gipsies, and especially of the Gipsy 
crone ; her interview, first with the Duke, then 
with the Duchess ; her incantation and its effect, and 
how much of this and under what circumstances he, 
the story-teller, overheard or otherwise knew ; what 
happened when he came to himself, and how he 



io8 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

helped the two off on horseback ; and, last of all, 
how the thirty years since he last set eyes on the 
Duchess have passed at the castle, and under what 
circumstances he is disburdening himself of the whole 
story, confessing his cherished loyalty to the runaway 
Duchess and his scorn of his master the Duke. 

How does the poem lead you to explain the char- 
acters of this husband and wife ? To account for 
the effect of the Gipsy's song upon Jacynth, the hunts- 
man, the Gipsy herself, and the Duchess ? To 
delight in the flight that followed ? 

Are the huntsman's final words, at the last line 
of the poem, a fair summing up of the characters 
and the situation ? What idea does his story-telling 
give of his own character ? Of his relations with 
Jacynth ? 

The relations of the husband and wife are not the 
main concern in " The Statue and the Bust ; " but 
the situation grows out of these, and through it we 
get a glimpse of the husband's character as well as of 
the wife's, what sort of claims he makes upon her, 
and how he enforces them, and how they do not, in 
this case, lead to the wife's flight. Show, in detail, 
how the whole story is brought out in narration of 
whut the Florentines tell about the statue, by giving 
dramatically what the lady said, what the bridesmaids 
saw and whispered, what the Duke said and looked, 
felt and perhaps expressed ; the efl^ect of their inter- 
view on the bridegroom's talk and action, and of this 
on the lovers' desires, talk, and inaction ; and show, 
finally, how the poet's comment on their letting *' I 
dare not wait upon I would " applies to the situation 
and the characters, remembering that the inquiry at 
this time is not to discuss the moralitv of his com- 



HUSBANDS AND WIVES 109 

ment, but merely to get what is expressed in its rela- 
tion to the story and the characters. 

Modern characters and a situation of a merely 
spiritual kind between the husband and the wife 
relate "James Lee's Wife" with the iirst two 
poems of this series rather than with those just re- 
viewed. The lyrical treatment brings out the situa- 
tion, — which is merely the recognition by the wife 
of the husband's estrangement, — and presents the 
characters of the two, through the emotional expres- 
sion of the wife's love, in much the same manner as 
in *' Any Wife to Any Husband." What are the 
different moods of the wife; and what do they tell 
you of the place where they are ; of herself, her 
love, her mind and tastes and development ; and of 
her husband's nature .? In ♦* IV. — Along the Beach " 
and ** IX. — On Deck" more comes out than in 
the other divisions of the poem as to her husband's 
point of view and personality and her own personal 
appearance. What do you gather as to these .? How 
do you account for the extreme harshness of her refer- 
ence to her own hair and skin in stanza viii. of ** On 
Deck " ? Is this to be taken literally ? Notice how 
the sub-titles of the different divisions, " At the 
Window," ** By the Fireside," etc., give a stage set- 
ting that suggests the terms of her expression. Might 
these similes as to her hair and skin be suggested by 
the cargo of the boat, — logs and bales of hair, that 
may be imagined as piled near by her on the deck of 
a French coaster, — or is it better to attribute these 
similes to overstatement belonging to her characteristic 
intensitv ? 

"A Forgiveness" and ** Beatrice Signorini " are 
counterpart pictures, in so far as both show how a 



lie BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

certain type of husband and a certain type of wife 
resented and treated an indulgence of their spouses in 
a superficial affair. The jealousy and pride of the 
husband of ** A Forgiveness " leads to actual violence 
against both the wife and her lover ; while that of 
the wife, " Beatrice Signorini," leads her to a deed 
of violence, less tragic but more effective, against the 
rival's portrait. But point out the many differences, 
both in the manipulation of the story (which, in the 
one case, is through the medium of the husband's 
monologue giving his point of view, and in the other, 
through the poet's narrative giving all points of view) 
and in the elements entering into the jealousy and 
the differences in the characters of the three persons 
in each poem. 

Contrast the rivals, particularly the insignificance 
of the man in "A Forgiveness," the superiority of 
Artemisia ; and the effect of this difference. 

Is jealousy the motive of the husband's act in *' A 
Forgiveness " ? Why then did he wait to punish his 
wife, and why did he punish her at all when he did, 
since he had then learned that she really loved himself? 
But if jealousy had no part in his act, why did he stab 
the rival? Consider whether **A Forgiveness" is 
really a poem of forgiveness or revenge, or both, or 
whether the title is satiric. Can that be said to be 
forgiveness which finds satisfaction only in the death 
of the person forgiven ? Is there anything to show 
that the husband regretted his action ? Ask where 
the husband is when he tells his story ; to whom he 
relates it ; what he was, — did he hold his position 
of honor or trust through worth or birth ? and in 
what line do you infer it was? Did this husband 
love his wife at first, and was she at all justified in 



HUSBANDS AND WIVES III 

resenting his living so much away from her ? What 
light does this throw on her character ? Why did 
she take the course of action he describes ? Was it 
through her lack of love for him, or was he at fault, 
or were circumstances to blame ? Do you admire the 
pride shown thereafter by both ? On which did this 
trial by silence bear harder ? Do you think the 
wife's second confession (of the truth this time) 
deserved the reception it got ? What do you think 
of the motives of this husband and wife ? Was either 
of them justified in the action taken ? Did the 
husband recognize the lover from the first? Note 
the lines, *' — or his who wraps — Still plain I seem 
to see! — About his head The idle cloak;" also, 
any other references to the same effect. Do you 
suppose the lover became a monk to elude the hus- 
band's vengeance, or do you think he may have gone 
into the monastery because his life was completely 
broken, through the incident with the wife ? What 
was the monk's fate at last, and did he deserve it? 

The situation which disturbs the relations of Elvire 
and her husband, when they visit Pornic fair and 
see Fifine, is a conflict, in practice rather than in 
theory, between their points of view as to how com- 
pletely a supreme love should assert its spiritual 
ascendency over lesser attractions. With reference to 
the wife, how does her situation and point of view 
differ from or agree with that of the other wives in 
the preceding poems ? The husband in character and 
point of view is much the same as the husband of 
"Any Wife to Any Husband." Although Elvire is 
walking by his side, instead of about to die, like the 
wife in the earlier poem, it is to be noticed that she 
grows shadowy from time to nrne. ?nd especially at 



112 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

the end of the poem, as seen through her husband's 
eyes ; that this is in accordance with the argument he 
is carrying on, wherein he makes the wife considered 
as a phantom judge herself considered as the real wife. 
In this way she partakes of the nature of that purely 
spiritual side of love with which he identifies her, and 
of the experimental side, also, through which she, too, 
must be judged. 

Follow his talk, not in particulars, but in its general 
trend, throughout the poem, in order to see what his 
argument setting forth the situation as he sees it 
amounts to ; then notice what his action is, and judge, 
taking him at his word, how it agrees or can be 
reconciled with the argument. What do both argu- 
ment and action reveal, — the first as to his culture 
and habits, aesthetic sensibility and taste, ideals and 
aspiration ; the second, as to his will and character ? 

For example, the general trend of his argument 
admits that there is a love which is essential and 
supreme for each two who feel it, but that this is 
spiritual and absolute and can only be known rela- 
tively. It is recognized the more clearly through 
the development of the individual consciousness, and 
that is developed by means of sense in relations with 
others in actual life. 

His opening speeches (stanzas vi.— xiii.) oppose 
conventional life to Bohemianism, and strive to find 
the secret of Fifine's real value as an individual, in 
contrast with Elvire and the other types of women 
he instances (lines 149—909). 

What has this to do with the argument ? Concede 
that it illustrates the worth of each individual soul, and 
that this worth may be perceived by every one despite 
imperfection through sympathetic relationship ; still. 



HUSBANDS AND WIVES 113 

does he need to have taken care to prepare the way 
for his final action (see stanza cxxxii.) to prove to 
himself in this case what he accepts in general ? 

Elvire objects (stanza Ix., see especially lines 917— 
922), showing her distrust of sense as really minis- 
trant to soul. Notice all the speeches attributed to 
her, how. they reveal her character slightly and 
incidentally, but throw suspicion on his, preparing the 
reader for this final action of his as being just what 
she guesses will follow his good argument for en- 
abling the intuitions of the soul to transcend sense. 

Despairing of explanation, in words, of the in- 
definite emotional appeal sense makes to soul as in 
music (Ixi.), he turns to nature (Ixii. and foil.), and 
then (lines 1009-1 143) hkens the use of the false 
or fleeting and relative in human attachments to attain 
the true and ultimate in human development to motion 
through the unstable, as in swimming, so that progress 
is made and the need for light and air met also. 

Elvire objects (Ixix.) that if development through 
the recognition of individual value were what he really 
desired, he would look for it in all men and not in 
women only. He acknowledges (lines 1 1 54-1 1 55) 
that this parry shifts his argument from the general 
to the particular test, i. e. not whether the reasoning 
is good, but whether he is reasoning disinterestedly 
and will apply it disinterestedly. To meet this he 
claims (1162-1371) that the materialism and selfish- 
ness of men are not qualified to educe growth as the 
idealism and unselfishness of women are. 

Again Elvire is made to object that if this be so, 

there is no need of a Fifine to do him such service 

less well than the Elvire he acknowledges best. To 

which he rejoins that a poorer craft induces the more 

8 



114 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

skill in the manager. The use of any means is 
to attain a genuine aim. It is the attraction of art 
that it uses means towards an end, transcends its 
processes, does not pretend to be absolutely, but in 
simulating the truth teaches what reality is (1372— 
1529). So, in general, through the perception of 
life without pretence that it is absolutely true or per- 
manent, a sense of truth, of permanence in flux itself, 
is evolved. This is exemplified widely, in a dream he 
tells (1539—2226), with reference to human nature 
and social relations. (See digest of the poem in 
Camberwell Browningy Notes, Vol. IX., p. 288, also 
passages in Introduction, pp. xiii, xvi-xxi.) 

Does the conclusion that the ripe nature knows 
the ascendency of soul and the good of constancy in 
love accuse the husband of lack of development .'' 
But is Elvire as developed as he } Are her ideas of 
married constancy the fruit of experience, or intuition, 
or convention ? 

** Bad Dreams " gives expression alternately to a 
wife's and a husband's mood in regard to each other, 
at a time when some discord of mistrust, on his part, 
and consciousness of it, on her part, has broken in on 
the harmony of their love. The under consciousness 
of this seems to have come out in these dreams they 
have which they tell each other. The first is ap- 
parently the wife's. What does it reveal of her secret 
uneasiness as to her husband's brooding t Does it 
seem to be an unconscious revelation of her soul t 
And should you judge from it that her love was true, 
deep ? The second is chiefly the dream of the hus- 
band which he tells her. From the opening stanzas 
addressed to her, before telling the dream itself, 
what idea do you get of his blaming her and being 



HUSBANDS AND WIVES 115 

primed to accuse her of the nameless evil he has but 
dreamed about her, yet puts faith in superstitiously, as 
if it were real ? How do you get this idea ? Is the 
dream itself of the toil of men and women at a dance 
without gayety a sign of a morbid mind as to the 
relations of men and women ? What is the dream ? 
Is it specific enough to suggest what his quarrel with 
her may be ? As to the charge itself, how does it 
reveal him as still shaken and under the spell of the 
dream ? Notice his break oif (line 62), and the 
protestation, first, that his respect shall stay firm, and 
then, that now she is there in the flesh she must explain, 
and not object that it was merely a dream, etc. She 
follows this with another dream (lines 86-100). 
Do you think its absurdity and inconsequence really 
dreamlike ? Do her dream and her manner about 
his convince you of her innocency of heart and 
mood ? Can you suppose it merely a clever turning 
off of the inquisitory air he has shown ? *' Bad 
Dreams," III., is supposably the man's dream and is 
suggestive, but so very vaguely so, of personal rela- 
tions or situations, that one may fancy what he 
pleases about it. How would you explain its con- 
gruity with the other dreams, and with the situation 
between these two .'' Does the implied meaning, 
suggested in Camberwell Brozvni?ig, Notes, p. 366, 
suit, or can you think of something closer to the 
figure of forest and city becoming a curse to each 
other? The last dream is obviously the wife's. Has 
it the same whimsical quality her second dream had ? 
Or has it rather the pathetic, almost heart- worn 
character her first one had ? What should you infer 
from that of the genuineness or slight nature of her 
love ? What does it tell you of his ? And do you 



Ii6 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

think her impression of him as revealed in this last 
dream is worth more than his of her ? 

Queries for Discussion. — Do the varieties of char- 
acter presented in these portraits of husbands and 
wives differ distinctly from one another; or may they 
be classed, with slight differences, under a few gen- 
eral types ? How many such are there, and how 
many may be added, or classed with these, on com- 
parison with the husbands and wives in ** King Victor 
and King Charles," "Andrea del Sarto," "The 
Ring and the Book," the ** Parleying with Daniel 
Bartoli," etc. (see list before given) ? 

Do the situations differ much; and how often do 
they arise from the desire of one or the other for ex- 
clusive devotion, from a rival's attractions, or outside 
social relations ? 

Is the husband's point of view 'in the first poem, 
or the wife's in the second, the finer, in that he is taken 
up with his own fidelity and has nothing to say as 
to hers, while she is concerned that his shall equal 
hers ? Is it a token of elevated love to desire that the 
loved one's return should be perfectly reciprocal, or is 
this inconsistent with a high degree of individual de- 
velopment of character ? 

Is there room for doubt that the Duke of Ferrara 
had his last Duchess put to death ? ** He succeeded 
and he seems to be proud of it," says Professor Corson 
("Introduction to Browning," p. 87), *Mn shutting 
off all her life currents . . . and we must suppose 
that she then sank slowly and uncomplainingly away. 
... * I gave commands ' certainly must not be un- 
derstood to mean commands for her death." Again 
(preface to third edition), he says he referred to 
Browning " the divided opinion as to the meaning " 



HUSBANDS AND WIVES 117 

of this expression ; that the poet *'made no reply, for 
a moment, and then said, meditatively, * Yes, I meant 
that the commands were that she should be put to 
death,' and then, after a pause, added ... as if the 
thought had just started in his mind, ' Or he might 
have had her shut up in a convent.' " Is this ques- 
tion of consequence aesthetically or historically, or 
both? See Symonds's ** Renaissance in Italy," Vol. 
III., chapter vii., for historical examples of such mar- 
ital commands. Which action best suits the character 
of the Duke and the Duchess ? How does it agree 
with the Riccardi's imprisonment of his wife in " The 
Statue and the Bust " ? (See *' The Statue and the 
Bust," a Parable, Poet-lorCy Vol. X., p. 398, for a 
similar instance.) 

In *'The Flight of the Duchess " can any explana- 
tion be made upon natural grounds for the change in the 
appearance of the Gipsy Queen which the teller of 
the story noticed ? Was the wife's attraction towards 
the Gipsies one of race, freedom from artificial re- 
straint, or of an emotional and happy natural life as 
opposed to a cold and formal subordination ? 

Is James Lee's wife unlovable ? Is it a defect in 
James Lee's character, or is it natural that he should 
tire of intensity ? 

For whom do we feel the most sympathy, — the 
deceived priest, the deceived husband, or the deceiv- 
ing wife of "A Forgiveness"? Whose love is the 
sincerest ? 

Is the argument of Elvire's husband sophistical, or 
is he insincere, or is his will weak, and his character 
cruder than his intellect ? 

II. Topic for Paper, Classwork, or Private Study. 
— The Relationship and its Possibilities. 



Il8 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Hifits : — Observe what the nature of the relationship 
is between these husbands and wives, and test its value 
for them by noticing what it is actually capable of 
for each in developing them and making life worth 
more to them. 

The husband, in ** By the Fireside," supplies his 
own estimate of his relationship with his wife and of 
its infinitely expansible worth to him in making his 
life worth while. And the wife, in the second poem, 
is so far in agreement with such an idea of the per- 
petual worth of a supreme love that for her it is ca- 
pable of absorbing her whole heart ; but, if we take 
her word for it, it is not capable of so absorbing her 
husband's. If for him the relationship were equally 
absorbing, even in her absence, her idea of all its capa- 
bilities for both of them would have been met. Would 
this prove to be development equally for him .? Might 
he not claim, as Elvire's husband does, that there are 
other relationships and points of view in life, and that 
it is a question for each individual nature to ask as to 
what educes its quality most effectively? Would the 
idea held by the husband of ** By the Fireside " have 
satisfied the craving of this type of wife, and would it 
carry out the utmost capability of the relationship ? 

Is there an intenser strain in the idea of the relation- 
ship held by James Lee's wife ? What can you de- 
rive from the poem as to James Lee's idea of their 
relationship ? Is there any justification of his ennui 
suggested, or was it akin to that of the hero of ** An- 
other Way of Love " ? 

Is the husband of ** By the Fireside," in a still 
closer sense, a supplementary figure to the wife of "Any 
Wife to Any Husband" because he is trying to meet 
such a wife's idea of the possibilities of their relationship ? 



HUSBANDS AND WIVES 119 

Can you judge how far he is indebted to her for the 
initiation of the idea in which he shares ? Notice, 
moreover, that, as Browning paints him, he is antici- 
pating what he will do in an old age not yet actually 
reached. Compare "St. Martin's Summer" as a 
picture of what such a husband might feel in presence 
of an attraction after his wife's death, although he 
recognized it to be of a lesser sort. Which con- 
quered in that poem ? Is he actually ** ghost be- 
reft," or does he only fear to be ? 

Which of the husbands in the remaining poems 
are more Hke the husband of "By the Fireside," 
in their idea of their marriage relationship and its 
possibilities ; and which are more like James Lee ? 
Is there in any of Browning's work any double of 
the husband of the first poem to be found (except 
by implication in ** One Word More," ** The 
Wall" — Prologue to " Pacchiarotto," "Never the 
Time and the Place," and other such thinly veiled 
autobiographical poems ?) outside of the lovers, — 
such as Valence in '* Colombe's Birthday," Capon- 
sacchi in "The Ring and the Book," etc. .? What 
inference do you draw from this as to Browning's 
observation of life ? 

The desire of '*Any Wife," James Lee's wife, 
and Elvire for evolving from the married relationship 
its utmost possibilities for mutual devotion might be 
called the desire for exclusive possession on the spirit- 
ual plane ; and so corresponding with the desire of 
the husbands of "My Last Duchess," ''The Flight 
of the Duchess, "The Statue and the Bust," for 
getting out of the relationship all it was selfishly 
worth to them, which might be called the desire for 
exclusive possession on the physical plane. 



I20 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Is Beatrice Signorini to be classed with this group 
of wives ? Or in what respects does her idea of 
the relationship and its possibilities diiFer from theirs? 
Is Francesco's relationship with her the highest pos- 
sible for him ? What does Browning's way of telling 
of his attraction for Artemisia intimate as to the pos- 
sibility for a relationship which would conduce to 
Romanelli's higher development were he capable of 
fitly responding? 

Does the husband of ** Bad Dreams" in his sus- 
piciousness and exactions belong with the husbands 
who are disposed to consider the married relationship 
as a field for impressing their will upon others ? Com- 
pare his ideas of marriage with those of the husband in 
George Meredith's ** Modern Love," as examples of 
the survival of dominating egotism mixed with the 
refinement of a modern husband of more than ordi- 
nary sensibility. 

The husband of'* A Forgiveness" is especially 
interesting because he presents an apparent contra- 
diction. He seems to have high ideas at first of the 
possibilities of the relationship between himself and 
his wife, to scorn jealousy of the vulgar sort, and 
to have the purest grief awakened when he dis- 
covers his wife's disloyalty. But later, his coldness 
and disdain, his refined cruelty of silence and of ven- 
geance, finally, when he learns that her error was 
due to misguided love for him, show him to be in 
his different way as bent upon asserting his preroga- 
tives as the Duke of Ferrara. 

Is it a token of the desire for spiritual ascendency 
which the wife of *' By the Fireside ' ' has and the 
wife of ** Any Wife to Any Husband " wants to have, 
that the wife of ' A Forgiveness ' is hungry for 



HUSBANDS AND WIVES 121 

greater love and a more spiritual power over her 
husband, and seeks to arouse his physical passions 
from the intellectual control to which they are subject ? 
In so doing she, as it were, divides the physical and 
spiritual elements of her love, feeding thus a jealous 
reaction, amounting almost to hatred, against the love 
that seemed to her too superior and self-contained to 
be love. Show the similar lack of balance on his 
part in the sequel. Did he not criticise her love 
also, and turn judge and executioner because it was 
not what he would have it ? Did either develop a 
higher phase of love in the course of the poem ? 

What should you say was the idea of their married 
relationship held by Elvire's husband; and what that 
of its possibilities ? Do the two disagree somewhat, 
his idea of their relationship being that he holds a 
similar right to that the Duke of Ferrara claimed, — 
to get out of that, and all other relations beside, what 
he wanted ; while his ideas of the possibilities of the 
relationship are almost as exalted as those of the 
husband of ** By the Fireside." 

Queries for Discussion. — What should you say 
was the basic difficulty in the relations between the 
unhappy or semi-happy pairs portrayed in this series 
of poems and what the firmer ground of union in 
*«By the Fireside" ? 

Shakespeare makes lago say that love is *' a per- 
mission of the blood." He writes in his " Sonnets " 
(cxvi.) that it is *'an ever-fixed ** mark," '* the star 
to every wandering bark," *' Love's not Time's fool, 
though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's 
compass come." By which criterion will the relation- 
ships in these poems best be judged, and which will 
be accounted as having the highest possibilities t 



122 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Is it due to the increasing importance in these 
poems of the woman as an active and intellectual 
power in the relationship, instead of a passive and 
merely physical element, that the type of love repre- 
sented in **By the Fireside" is the highest? If the 
wives in . some of these poems be considered to 
desire to exercise a sort of spiritual despotism, can it 
be said of this that it is a benevolent despotism tending 
toward the development of the higher values of the 
relationship, while the physical despotism exercised in 
fact by certain of the husbands is crushing to any 
life or happiness ? But would it be better still to 
have no despotism even of a benevolent variety in 
the relationship ? 

Does ** By the Fireside " show the highest capability 
of the related power and characters of the husband and 
the wife because the physical and spiritual elements 
of love are fused ? 

III. Topic for Paper y Classzvork, or Private Study. 
— The Artistic Intention. 

Hints: — What do these poems reveal of the poet's 
design and of the means used to attain it ? 

The first two poems are framed to express a signifi- 
cant personal mood ; the second, as its title shows, 
being intended also to be somewhat more than per- 
sonal, to be typical of the wifely attitude. The title, 
** By the Fireside," also reveals design. With its 
implications of the close of the year, of cold and 
darkness, it suggests the right atmosphere for this poem 
of anticipated old age. Use is intentionally made, 
too, of autumn's "pleasant hue," its woodland fruits, 
and crimson-splashed leafage to symbolize happy old 
age. Notice all such symbols. Point out the adapta- 
tion to the theme of the imagery of the book, the 



HUSBANDS AND WIVES 123 

youngsters, the branch-work vista. The figure as to 
the ** branch- work " is doubtless suggested by the 
foregoing fancy of the youngsters going to the hazel 
wood. Observe that he speaks in stanza v. of the 
outside frame of the branch-work as hke the hazel-trees, 
the inside as less material and external, — ** a rarer 
sort " pertaining to the world of mind. Notice the 
metaphoric reference to Italy in stanza vi. Is it a 
happy figure to use in a poem written in memory and 
praise of a wife ? The imagery employed in the 
nature descriptions is of what kinds .? The mill or 
iron forge that ** breaks solitude in vain " (line 35) is 
humanistic, one may say, in its implication, this 
building with human interest being likened to a little 
interruption of nature's large stillness ; the ** thread 
of water," all that finds its way through the obstruction 
the torrent has piled in its own course (hne 40), and 
the "silver spear-heads" (44) are figures borrowed 
from the similar look of material objects. But the 
simile of the small ferns' teeth (50) is both human- 
istic in its source and objectively graphic in effect. 
Notice the humanistic image in stanza xxxii. and so on. 
Are any of the figures used in the passage in the 
poem describing the natural beauty of the Italian 
scene especially adapted to the larger symbolism of the 
poem, like the first references to the season of the 
year as corresponding to life's November, etc. ? 
The small bird (151) that sings except at noonday, 
when a pair of hawks threaten it, seems to signify 
more than usual. What does it suggest of the danger 
to love's song in the high noon of life.? Compare 
with the hawk that stalks on the bough where the 
birds are quarrelling, in ** A Woman's Last Word" 
(lines 5-1 1 ). Observe, also, the tree with its one 



124 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

last leaf hanging, to which he likens his sleeping heart 
(lines 201-215). Is this symbolic, — a pictorial 
allusion fleetingly suggestive of a subtle feeling, but 
not to be tracked out in Hteral detail ; or is it as elabo- 
rately allegorical as Mr. Nettleship makes it in the 
following curious passage : **I, in that early autumn 
time of my brain, stood there like an old wood-god 
worshipping a nymph changed to a tree. ... I knew 
there was no chance for me to gain any token of love 
from that tree with its one precious leaf, by any act of 
my own. ... I was not in that summer prime 
when I could take by force of brain what gifts I 
would. But the tree was good to me. At the slight 
wind of my unexpressed mad longing, it unfastened its 
leaf. ... In that moment you fulfilled my hope." 

Is stanza Hi. a part of this husband's reminiscences, 
or is it written from his present standpoint, while his 
wife is still sitting opposite to him and before the 
anticipated autumn comes ? Does the recurrence in the 
last stanza to ideas expressed in the opening stanza 
repeat it needlessly, or serve intentionally to set 
the poem in the frame of a plan carrying out the 
thought ? 

The metre in which the poet makes the man ex- 
press himself is a four-stressed line, generally iambic, 
grouped in stanzas of five verses alternately rhyming ; 
the fifth line is shorter, with but three stresses, rhyming 
with the initial rhyme, and closing the stanza percep- 
tibly to the ear. 

The longer five-stressed line of the second poem 
lends to the ardent tone of** Any Wife " a much more 
melancholy cadence. In comparison the verse of 
** By the Fireside," although pensive, almost dreamy, 
is both cheerier and less suppressed. Notice the 



HUSBANDS AND WIVES 125 

different stanza and rhyme scheme ; how infrequently 
the stress falls on the first instead of the second syllable 
of the foot compared with the foregoing poem ; how 
much simpler the imagery is. Is it less humanistic, 
but more complete in its similarity to the idea ? 
Especially observe the obvious fitness of the tomb 
metaphor (lines 103-114) and the perfect beauty of 
it in all its adaptation to the mood expressed. 

Does this difference in the range of the imagery 
between the two poems serve the purpose of portray- 
ing the personality of the two distinct sorts of poetic 
mind here finding dramatic expression, — the one 
tending to be both more fleetingly allusive and human- 
istic in its fancies, like Robert Browning ; the other 
more purely lyric, subjective, and spontaneous, like 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning f 

The three following poems are contrived so as to 
bring out personality chiefly, also ; but to do this in 
a much more complex way, and in a way both dra- 
matically and metrically suited to the spokesman in the 
first two, and to the general air of a Florentine legend 
in the third of the stories. They each depict more 
persons than one, and these not subjectively nor by 
allusion merely, as in the foregoing poems, but objec- 
tively in relationship with others and amid various 
surroundings both of a concrete and a historic sort. 

For example, show how the fresco-painted, bronze- 
adorned palace-hall at Ferrara makes the right back- 
ground for the Duke's tell-tale talk with the Count's 
envoy ; and how the flowing, rarely end-stopped, 
five-stressed verse, couplet-rhyming yet never notice- 
ably obtruding the rhyme, seems to be in general 
accord with the manner of such a spokesman as the 
one through whose eyes this bit of life is seen. 



126 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

The whole country, with its occupants of diverse 
callings and customs, the castle, household, stable, 
etc., stand behind the second poem. Several differ- 
ent sets of social relationship — such as those between 
the Kaiser, the Duke and his huntsmen, the rude 
Northland, sophisticated Paris, and free gipsy life — 
add their larger semi-feudal environment to the story. 
And the medium through which it is all set forth — the 
rough yet ready, couplet, triplet, and alternate rhymed,, 
often perilously double and obtrusively rhymed verse, 
racy with hunting terms, and imagery of a homely 
out-doors kind — is adapted to suit the tongue of the 
keen-eyed gamekeeper who helps the Duchess to 
escape, and whose kind heart is susceptible enough to 
be impressed with the gipsy incantation song, so that 
he could record it faithfully as he does, in a sustained, 
singing, smooth and simple rhymed line, strongly con- 
trasting in all other respects, except that the line is also 
four-stressed, with his own speech. Collect examples 
of the hunting terms, the allusions to active life, the 
proverbial expressions and the references, when they 
are of a literary sort, to familiar folk stories, such 
as Orson and Esau. Are there any allusions that do 
not suit the spokesman } Study the effect of the 
rhymes, and the contrast with the Gipsy's song. (See 
Poet-lore, " Rhymes in Browning," Vol. II. y Sept. 
1890, pp. 480-486.) 

Is the terza-rima of ** The Statue and the Bust" 
an appropriate metre for that Florentine legend ? 
Why ? What allusions and similes (see Camberwell 
Browningy Vol. IV., p. 397) are there in this poem ; 
and can you trace any choice in them ? Does even 
the imagery of the conclusion — - which is separable 
from the legend itself, as the townsmen tell it — suit 



HUSBANDS AND WIVES 127 

the Italian setting ? Notice the ** soldier-saints " of 
line 222, and '* the very Guelph," 234, and show 
their pertinence. 

These poems so far considered reveal artistic inten- 
tion in their imagery and metrical structure, as well 
as in the manipulation of the subject matter. Regarded 
as wholes, do they reveal artistic intention in broader 
ways ? In all of these three poems the design of the 
poet to recreate the life and spirit of the Renaissance 
period in general, and in particular its crudities as to 
married life, may be studied with reference to the 
history of that important epoch which forms the 
threshold of modern civilization. (See Camberwell 
Brow?ii?igy passages on these poems in Introduction, 
Vol. IV., pp. xiv and xv, for further general hints. 
As to Riccardi's imprisonment of his bride, and what 
the Duke's admiration of her might have meant for 
him, see " Browning's 'The Statue and the Bust,' a 
Parable," by Prentiss Cummings, Poet-lore, Vol. X., 
No. 3, pp. 397-416.) 

In the second and third of these three poems, the 
intention to make them illustrate moral evolution is 
also revealed directly. In the first of this group, 
** My Last Duchess," moral intention is only re- 
vealed indirectly. There is no trace of artistic ma- 
nipulation of the story to make it suggest an inner 
meaning. In the others what traces are there of a 
sort of moral symbolism ? And how is this presented ? 
Notice that this symbolism consists, in " The Flight 
of the Duchess," in drawing a contrast between a 
sapless, egotistical, and imitative manner of life, and 
one irradiated with the warmth and movement of love 
and freedom, so that the question is not, *'Was the 
Duchess justified in running away with the Gipsy 



128 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Oueen," but, rather, is the Duke's death in life 
compatible with any spiritual progress at all ? 

** The Statue and the Bust " has been accused of 
a didactic purpose instead of artistic moral symbolism. 
But in this poem, as in *'The Flight of the Duchess,'* 
is the design which is revealed one that tends towards 
the illumination of a basic moral principle, and not 
one that directs one how to act in a given case ? (See 
Mr. Cummings' " The Statue and the Bust," as cited 
above.) 

Which of the remaining poems of this series reveal 
artistic intention, both historically and morally, as these 
two poems do .? 

** James Lee's Wife" shows artistic design in the 
way in which various details of its allusions suit the 
lyrical mood, such as the comparisons with the lake 
and swan, the dell and dove (Part I. lines 15-20), 
the ship rotting in port (Part II. 19—24), the 
water striped like a snake, the fig leaf like a hand (III. 
3 and 10). Instance others. In this it is like the first 
two poems of this series. It shows also, like "By 
the Fireside," a larger and more complex use of meta- 
phors to illustrate the situation and the subject as a 
whole. For example, the change of season as a sym- 
bol of change in love is the keynote of the poem. It 
is struck in the first two stanzas lightly ; it reappears 
in Part III.; it deepens in significance, to denote the 
change in all things spiritual in Part VI. (51—80), and 
in Part VII. it is metamorphosed still further to sym- 
bolize the spiritual harvest of joy the earth gets out of 
change, and in Part VIII. to suggest the inner spiritual 
beauty, in contrast to external beauty, that may be got 
out of the use of life as it is, whether ideal and per- 
fect or not. The metrical and scenic adaptation of 



HUSBANDS AND WIVES I 29 

the different parts to express the different moods of 
the wife is manifold. (See reference to this in Cam- 
berwell Browfiing, Vol. V., Introduction, p. xxiii.) 

** Bad Dreams " may be compared with this poem as 
having parts differently made, to suit the lyrical design 
in metre and metaphor. But is it as rich as ** James 
Lee's Wife " in these respects ? Ask if each part in 
both poems has a plan of its own ; what it is, what 
differences may be observed in the number of stresses 
to the line, the stanza form, and the relation of the 
title of each part of "James Lee's Wife" to the im- 
agery and the mood. Neither of these poems reveals 
either the historic or moral sort of artistic intention 
noticed in the preceding group. 

There are few allusions in ** A Forgiveness " to 
place its historic background definitely before us. The 
names of the maids (line 48), the allusion to Don 
Quixote (97) and to the order of the Golden Fleece, 
a Bourbon decoration peculiar to the Courts of 
Madrid and Vienna (195), warrant the acceptance of 
it, however, as a dramatic portrait of a husband and wife 
intended to be as typically Spanish, perhaps of the 
seventeenth century, as ** My Last Duchess "is of 
Northern Italy in the age of the Despots. Like " My 
Last Duchess," it depicts the power a husband of rank 
exercised at pleasure or displeasure over his wife's life ; 
and like it, also, it presents this tragic transcript of 
household manners in a completely colorless way, so 
far as moral intention is concerned ; and this is done, 
as in the earlier poem, necessarily, because the in- 
cident and the characters are made known through the 
mouth of the husband himself. In his grim talk with 
the priest, the main intention is to show the inex- 
orable pride of the Spanish statesman's personality, 
9 



130 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

whose softening towards his wife and the priest meant 
simply that, having come to feel less contempt for them, 
he did them the honor to hate and kill them in cruel 
ways, each artistically appropriate. Notice particu- 
larly the description in ** A Forgiveness" of the 
"arms of Eastern workmanship " and its relation to 
the character of the main actor and his deed of ven- 
geance. Do you feel any sympathy with this hus- 
band, and if so, why r Is it due to the poet that you 
feel any, and how ? Are his dignity and his power 
of will to work, to restrain himself (notice espe- 
cially lines 292-304) to attain his ends, qualities that 
most excite your respect for his character, or your 
sense of pathos that such a man should indulge in so 
desolate a vengeance? Are you <* sad," the poet 
seems to ask, through this man's words (line 390), 
the subtlest sort of artistic indirection, <* for whose sake 
hers, or mine, or his " ? Is the verse metrically, and 
as to rhyme, the same as that of '* My Last Duchess " ? 
Study the monologue-form of ** A Forgiveness " with a 
view to exhibiting the skill shown in revealing the 
characters of all the actors, so far as they relate to the 
incident given, through the mouth of a single speaker. 
Should you say that in ** Fifine at the Fair" the artis- 
tic intention of the poet is richer and more complex 
than in any of the other poems of this series ? Has it 
historic intention ? To what time does it belong, 
judging by its allusions ? Notice lines 528—535, 
551, 706, 1 107, 1588. Could these denote any 
other background than the nineteenth century ? And 
would you place Elvire's husband himself, as he is 
brought out in point of view and character as well as 
culture, anywhere else than in modern times ? May 
one not be sure that *' Fifine at the Fair " will in 



HUSBANDS AND WIVES 131 

the next century or so as certainly betray the artistic 
intention of the poet to paint a distinctively modern 
husband contemporaneous with us of to-day as in 
**My Last Duchess" to paint a husband of the late 
Renaissance period ? 

Still another sort of artistic intention revealed 
through Hterature instead of history belongs to this 
poem. Its motto from Moliere's ** Don Juan " in- 
dicates that the poet's design in writing the poem was 
to take up the Don Juan theme in a way specially 
suited to meet the spiritual instead of the merely physi- 
cal side of marriage generally brought forward. And 
this design is reinforced by the employment through 
allusion of the interpretation by Euripides of the great 
Greek marriage myth of Helen. (See, upon this 
literary evidence of artistic intention, passages in Cam- 
berzuell Brow?ii?igy Vol. IX., pp. xv— xviii). There 
is in *' Fifine," in accord with this, an idea rather 
symbolistically suggested, that wives typically are 
nearer spirit than flesh, and represent that side in the 
relationship and the aspiration toward the spiritual 
good of love, more purely than husbands do. Com- 
pare with ** By the Fireside," ** Any Wife to Any 
Husband," the Prologue and Epilogue to ** Fifine," 
and in the ** Parleying with Daniel Bartoli," the rela- 
tions of the Duke and the druggist's daughter. 

Do Elvire's brief remonstrances, as re-echoed by 
the husband, amount to anything, in showing the 
poet's moral intention in the poem ? How otherwise 
is any glimpse of it to be had, since, as in ** My Last 
Duchess" and ** A Forgiveness," the husband him- 
self is the mouthpiece ? Does the poet make the 
apologist condemn himself? And does he take an 
artistic means to do this or not ? In what wav, after 



132 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

all, could he be said to condemn himself? Is it of any- 
thing further than lack of development ? In what 
way does the epilogue show the poet's predisposition 
towards constancy in married love as the fruit of life 
experience, and how does this agree with the idea 
of **By the Fireside'* and ** Any Wife to Any 
Husband" ? 

What examples are there in ** Fifine " of easy col- 
loquialisms, humor, irony, picturesque and beautiful 
description, etc.? Are any of these inappropriate to 
the character of the hero ? How does the long six- 
stressed line suit his nimble mind ? (As to metre, see 
Camberwell Brownings Introduction, p. xv.) Has 
the poem any metaphorical images that are prominendy 
symbolical of its larger meanings? Observe the series 
of enlargements of the scene by similes seen in a dream, 
of the crowd in St. Mark's Square, of the carni- 
val of the whole world, of the Druid Temple, etc. 
Also, especially the use of the swimming metaphor 
as used by the modern Don Juan, and as used 
by the poet in the prologue ** Amphibian." Is 
the analogy of the butterfly to the ** certain soul 
which early slipped its sheaf" a reference to Elizabeth 
Barrett Browning ? And do you think his different 
drift in his employment of the same metaphor, using 
the unstable element, in swimming, so as to rival prog- 
ress in the air, and likening his own disporting in 
poetry on earth to the best mimicry possible to him 
of her spiritual life in heaven, — is this designed to 
symbolize the continued companionship of the poet's 
love and life with that of his wife, to whom he dedi- 
cates his poem ? 

The manner of telling Beatrice Signorini's story 
differs how from this and most of the preceding 



HUSBANDS AND WIVES 133 

poems ? Is it a lyrical expression of a single person- 
ality like the first two in the series ? Is it a mono- 
logue ? How many characters appear ? How definite 
an idea of them do you get ? Is their speech given 
directly, and does the poet's view come out also, and 
how far ? Can this and ** The Statue and the Bust '' 
be said properly to be written like condensed novels 
or short stories in verse ? Is the verse in metre and 
rhyme like the monologues of this series ? 

Is Artemisia one of Browning's best examples of 
the so-called ** New Woman," and how does the 
poet's way of regarding her reveal his point of view 
toward genius in women ? 

Queries for Discussion. — What does ** The Statue 
and the Bust" imply ? Is this view, — 

*< Weakness of will in the case of the lovers in this 
poem wrecked their lives ; for they were not strong 
enough to follow either duty or love." (^Camberwell 
Brow?ii?igy Introduction, Vol. IV., p. xv.) " The 
closing stanzas point the moral against the palsy of the 
will, whose strenuous exercise is life's main gift." 
(^Ibid.y Notes, Digest, p. 397.) — 
or is this view of the poet's moral intention warranted 
by the poem, — 

" Prudence and conventionality . . . count for nothing 
with the poet. But conventionality counts ... in our 
conduct of life. It may have been the * crowning dis- 
aster to miss life ' for the man and w^oman : if so, it 
was a sacrifice justly due to human society. The sacri- 
fice and self-restraint . . . may have atoned for much 
that was defective in their lives." (Browning Cyclo- 
pedia, p. 579.) 

Did Browning have any allegorical intention in 
'* The Flight of the Duchess " ? 



134 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Do you agree with this interpretation by Mrs. 
Owen of the London Browning Society as put by Dr. 
Berdoe : — 

"The Duke represents our gross self; the retainer 
who tells the story represents the simple human nature 
that may either rise with the Duchess or sink with 
the Duke. The Duchess represents the soul, the 
highest part of our complex nature. The retainer aids 
the Duchess, or human nature aids the soul, to free 
itself from the coarse, low, earth-nature, the Duke. 
So that the « Flight of the Duchess ' is the supreme 
moment when the soul shakes off the bondage of self 
and finds its true freedom in others." 

If it is merely a romance, has it none the less an 
inner meaning of a general nature, and what should 
you say it was .'' 

How is moral design justifiable in a work of art ? 
Should it have none .? How do artists exemphfy this 
question in their work ? Illustrate. 

Should the artist make a distinction between an in- 
organic crystallization of his inner meaning and an 
implication of it more or less unmistakable which 
grows out of his work and agrees with its artistic 
structure .? Is such a way of conveying moral inten- 
tion an evidence of the highest artistic skill instead of 
the contrary? How has Browning done in these 
poems } Do his poems, whose artistic structure does 
not agree with conveying moral design, refrain from 
it ; and in the poems' which supply direct illustration 
of their inner meaning, does their artistic construction 
permit and suit it ? 

Does a comparison of these poems tend to show 
that it is a characteristic of Browning to make his 
imagery agree with his situations and subject-matter ? 



HUSBANDS AND WIVES 135 

Do they show that he, more than most poets, puts his 
imagination into his characters so thoroughly that they 
rarely make allusions inconsistent with the point of 
view belonging to their time and character ? 

Elvire's husband says that '* Man takes all and 
gives naught" in order to develop himself, while 
woman's part is to bestow all and be absorbed, ** Wo- 
men grow you," and ** 't is only men completely 
formed, full-orbed, are fit to . . . illustrate the leader " 
("Fifine," Ixxi.-lxxiv.) ; Francesco Romanelli says 
of himself, ** ' Man — by nature I exceed woman the 
bounded . . . my portion is ' — he chose to think — 
* quite other than a woman's: I may drink at many 
waters . . . abler thereby, though impotent before ' " 
(** Beatrice Signorini," 66-131). The comment on 
this last view, apparently by Browning, is to the effect 
that Francesco's desire was unjustifiable to make Arte- 
misia's *'germ of individual genius — what we term 
the very self," etc., "his own." Which is the 
truer view to take of the relations of men and women, 
— or which, if both are true to life as it is, is the one 
showing the higher development in life and thought ? 
Compare also Browning's statement that it were 
" the better impulse," since he could not admit 
Artemisia's art and her *' plain sufficiency of fact that 
she is she and I am I " (line 70), if he wisely tram- 
pled on pride and grew hers, **not mine . . . gain 
not her but lose myself." Upon this impulse, put 
aside by Francesco, the poet again comments : ** Such 
love were true love : love that way w^ho can ! Some 
one that 's born half woman, not whole man." Does 
this betray Browning's view of the right trend in the 
evolution of love .? 



Art and the Artist 

Page 

Vol. Text Note 

<* The Guardian Angel " iv 127 380 

<< Old Pictures in Florence " iv 52 371 

'< Pictor Ignotus " v 22 286 

" Fra Lippo Lippi " v 24 287 

'< Andrea del Sarto " v 36 289 

" The Bishop Orders his Tomb " v 45 291 

** Deaf and Dumb " v 216 313 

*' Eurydice to Orpheus" v 218 314 

*' A Face" v 221 314 

*' Pacchiarotto and How he Worked in Distemper " ix 171 294 

" The Lady and the Painter " ix 221 370 

I. Topic for Paper ^ Classwork, or Private Study. — 
The Subject-Matter and its Manner of Presentation. 

Hints: — For abstracts of subject-matter of the 
poems, see Notes to Carnberwell Browni?ig, as given 
above. 

For consideration as to treatment, these poems may- 
be grouped as descriptive of pictures, — " The Guar- 
dian Angel," *'Eurydice to Orpheus," '*AFace." 
With these may be included " Deaf and Dumb," 
though the inspiration here is a group of statuary. 
" Pacchiarotto " is descriptive, being an account of 
an incident in an artist's life. The most important 
of the art poems, however, are in dramatic mono- 
logue form. All the remaining poems cited are in 
this form except the slight bit, " The Lady and the 
Painter," which is in drama form. 



ART AND THE ARTIST 137 

Taking up the simpler poems first, we may inquire 
into the poet's manner of translating a picture into 
words so that the reader may see it before him. 

It is to be observed in ** The Guardian Angel" 
that there is no direct description of the picture, but 
that in giving expression to the emotions and thoughts 
aroused, the picture gradually appears in all its details. 

In stanza i., by means of the poet's address to the 
great angel vind his expression of the desire that it 
would leave the child for him, we see that the 
picture is of an angel and child, and that the angel 
is ministering to the child. In the second stanza 
how much more of the picture do we see as the 
poet imagines how the angel might step out to him 
and guard him, as it does the child, — that the angel's 
wings are white, and that the child is praying on a 
tomb, also that the angel is looking toward heaven ? 
In the third stanza what additional light is given 
upon the position of the child, and how does the 
thought of the poet here and in the next two stanzas 
transcend the picture ? (See the picture given as 
frontispiece to Vol. IV., Camberwell Brozv?ii?ig.) In 
stanza vi. he turns from the picture to a friend, Alfred, 
and addresses him, mentioning the artist, and giving 
another glimpse of the picture. Does this glimpse add 
any fresh details ? In stanza vii. he tells his friend 
how he and his own angel (his wife) used to go and 
see the picture, and what reason does he now give for 
having written the poem, and for whom does it appear 
he wrote it } The last three stanzas give the poem 
almost the effect of a letter. Do you not think that 
the artistic effect of the poem is somewhat marred 
by this personal touch at the end ? 

In ''Eurydice to Orpheus" there is no description 



138 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

of the picture, only the interpretation of the soul of 
Eurydice as the poet reads it in her face. Would 
the poem convey a definite impression without any 
knowledge of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice ? 

In ** Deaf and Dumb," again, the group is not 
described in detail, but through the thought it in- 
spires in the poet we feel rather than see its beauty. 

** A Face" describes in more complete detail a 
picture after -the manner of the early Tuscan art 
which has been suggested by the beauty of the face. 
Notice that this differs from the other poems in that 
it reflects a mood of admiration for exquisite physical 
beauty, while the others breathe of spiritual beauty, 
and, as already noted in the case of "The Guardian 
Angel," the emotions aroused by the picture in the 
poet make the principal motif of the poem. (For 
other picture-painting in words in Browning, see Cam- 
berwell Browjiingy Vol. I., *' Pauline," lines 656- 
667, Notes, p. 308; Vol. VIII., **Balaustion's 
Adventure," lines 2672-2697, Notes, p. 299.) 

" Pacchiarotto " is in the form of a simple narra- 
tive told in the poet's own person ; but some com- 
plexity is introduced through the fact that the story 
is not told for its own sake, but for the sake of a 
personal digression on the part of the poet, in which 
he points a moral against his own critics. (For 
further discussion of this poem, see Programme '* The 
Autobiographical Poems.") 

Among those art poems which we have designated 
as dramatic monologues, there is considerable variation 
of treatment. ** Old Pictures in Florence," for 
example, being evidently an expression of the poet's 
own thoughts, might more properly be called a solilo- 
quy than a dramatic monologue, yet the style is so 



ART AND THE ARTIST 139 

conversational, the poet frequently breaking out in 
direct address to some old artist-worthy or some 
dull critic, that the effect is thoroughly lively and 
dramatic. 

Having become familiar with the subject-matter of 
the monologues by aid of the notes, it is interesting 
to inquire into the details of its presentation. Ifi 
*« Old Pictures in Florence," the poet gives first 
(stanzas i. and ii.) a general description of the scene that 
meets his gaze as he looks out over the villa-gate, un- 
til his attention is especially attracted by what ? Can 
you guess why Giotto's tower startled him? Per- 
haps because it suggests to him vivid thoughts concern- 
ing art and artists, out of which grow conceptions of 
the place the Campanile holds in the development of 
art ; or else because it suddenly reminds him, as he 
playfully pretends, of a special claim he has on the 
recognition of artist -ghosts which it stings him to the 
heart to feel that they have disregarded. This special 
claim seems to be that he is guiltless of the carelessness 
which the world in general shows to the tentative work 
of all artists and all stages of art. From the especial 
apostrophe to Giotto which the sight of the bell-tower 
calls out, in stanza iv. he falls into reminiscences of 
what he had done on winter afternoons, in the course 
of which he draws contrasts between the things that 
interest the men of Florence and that interest him, — 
the old pictures. The neglect of these next brings to 
his mind the fame of the Rafaels, etc., and he pictures 
what their state of mind may be in comparison with 
the ** wronged great souls," which causes him to wax 
indignant at those *' of the little wit" who cannot 
appreciate these early artists, and results in his giving 
them instruction. What does he declare to be the 



140 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

characteristics of Greek art ? Observe the graphic way 
in which he describes Greek art as presenting ideals of 
beauty and power to mankind which they aspired 
toward but could not attain unto. What did they 
learn from this constant consciousness of their own 
weakness compared with the strength of Greek art ? 
Does the poet appear to consider the lesson learnt a 
good one ? 

Continuing stanza xv. with his " instructions," 
what does he declare to be the very essence of 
growth, and how did the early Italian painters dis- 
cover this and illustrate in their works this new atti- 
tude toward life ? In stanza xx. he turns from 
instructing to exhorting the unappreciative to give 
honor to those pioneer artists who began the great 
revolution. Here the poet has a beautiful fancy as to 
the future life ; what is it ? and how does his mood 
change in the next stanza ? In xxiii. he enlarges 
upon his own love of these early artists, and goes on 
to what he calls his especial grievance. Here (xxiv.) 
follows a humorous description of the ghosts of the 
early painters watching the whitewashing, etc. of 
their pictures, then departing down the black streets ; 
and the poet declares himself aggrieved that they never 
reveal to him any of the lost treasures they must know 
about. Then he goes on to particularize those from 
whom he would expect nothing and those he thinks 
might remember him, leading up finally to Giotto, 
against whom it now appears is his special grievance, 
as was hinted in stanza iii. Describe what this griev- 
ance is and what he declares will be the final upshot. 
In anticipative gratitude at this result he takes up a 
strain of prophecy which continues to the end of the 
poem. What is this prophecy } 



ART AND THE ARTIST 141 

In **Pictor Ignotus " we have a true dramatic 
monologue, though not at all a complex one, for it 
portrays but one character, the unknown painter, who, 
after breaking forth with straightforward directness in 
regard to his having been able to paint as well as the 
youth all are praising, goes on to explain how he had 
not been hindered by fate, why ? Because he had the 
inspiration in his soul, observation equally penetrating 
for the mysteries of heaven, of his own soul, and of 
life around him ; and moreover the mechanical skill 
to put into form his thoughts. Observe with what 
exquisite language he now describes the emotions 
and passions he might have portrayed. In line 23 he 
doubts for a moment whether he has not wasted his 
powers. How does this feeling change in the next 
line ? From the ecstasy he feels in the thought of 
the pictures he might have painted, he passes on to 
the thought of the happiness it would have been to 
have had these pictures loved and himself loved because 
of them. He wakes now from these ecstasies to tell 
why he could not follow his artistic inspiration, and 
had thus made his choice as he willed. Notice that 
only through description of the feelings he has as he 
works, do we learn for the first time what that work 
really was. 

Does this poem resemble ** The Guardian Angel" 
in that its living principle is the moods and emotions 
of the artist, and the facts we learn in this case as to 
his talent, his character, and the conditions of his life, 
do not come out by means of any direct description, 
but as the necessary expression of his moods ? 

**Fra Lippi Lippo " is an example of a more 
complex monologue. Observe how through Lippo' s 
talk we get a complete picture, not only of Lippo 



142 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

himself, but of the functionaries who are detaining 
him, of the successive actions in the scene, and of the 
time and place where it is being enacted. Reading 
through hne 44, what do you learn of him ? What 
do you learn of the looks of his detainers, and of 
their actions ? After he has picked out the one he 
sees to be most friendly, he proceeds to tell him how 
he comes to be wandering about the streets so late at 
night. What effect does his story have upon his 
friend ? (See line 76.) 

Since the friendly individual's sympathy is not 
wholly aroused by this tale, and he is inclined to 
question how it is that a monk should enjoy such 
escapades, the clever Lippo goes on to give an 
account of his childhood and the way he came to be 
a monk. Note Lippo' s wit and humor as he tells 
this story. ''What came next?" we may imagine 
his friend to inquire. To which he replied by telling 
of the difficulties that beset the monks in discovering 
what he was fit for. How d^id he show them what 
his natural bent was, and how does he say his ob- 
servation as a child was sharpened ? The monks 
would have turned him adrift for his artistic pro- 
pensities, but what does the Prior say ? When 
Lippo is allowed to give rein to his talent, how and 
what does he describe himself as painting ? And 
how did the monks regard it ? But what do the 
Prior and the learned say about his art ? To their 
criticisms what does Lippo retort ? Having given 
this account of himself, he goes on (line 223) to 
apologize a little for himself. How ? And then to 
tell how in spite of the fact that he is his own master 
now, the early criticisms still have their effect upon 
him. Is his question about whether they with their 



ART AND THE ARTIST I43 

Latin know, sarcastic, or the expression of a dor- 
mant reverence for the opinion of those who are 
learned ? 

The result of this conflict in his nature between 
his natural bent and its suppression by criticism is, as 
he goes on to say, what ? Observe how, in the lines 
following this up to line 269, he forgets all restraint 
and gives vent to his unvarnished opinion of those 
who criticise the realism of his work. At this point 
he grows stronger in his own opinion, and prophesies 
that such work as his will be the work of the future. 
Who has he already as a pupil? Then he appeals to 
his friend to judge for himself as to whether his view 
of life and art is not higher than the old one. What 
supposed objections does he meet ? and what are the 
main points in his argument ? Observe how he 
works up to a cHmax of feeling which shows that to 
the soul of Lippo beauty, natural and physical, was in 
itself a divine revelation. He finishes with another 
outbreak against the *' fools," and suddenly remember- 
ing himself, he grows humble and apologetic again, 
and promises to make amends. What does he say he 
will do to make amends, and how does he character- 
istically describe the picture which will make things 
all right with the Church again ? It is evident that 
his arguments finally convinced his friend among the 
guard who " nabbed" him, for he goes off home in 
the early morning light. 

Is this long talk of Lippo' s rendered natural through 
the fact that he and one of the guards took a fancy 
to each other ? Can we suppose that his listener 
appreciated all his remarks, or that he was simply 
taken with his manner and personality ? 

In ''Andrea del Sarto " the presentadon is in the 



144 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

same manner as in ** Fra Lippo Lippi." The reader 
is immediately brouglit face to face with the hero of 
the poem. He is speaking, and in the course of his 
talk we see not only him but his wife, learn the sort 
of relation that exists between them, and get a ghmpse 
of their past life. 

What is the time and the scene, and what is he prom- 
ising his wife he will do to-morrow ? But what does 
he desire to do at that moment? As he looks at 
her, he sees in his mind's eye a picture of them- 
selves ; how does he describe it ? From this he turns 
to a comparison of his own style and capabilities as 
an artist with those of other celebrated painters. Give 
the gist of what he says. 

Overwhelmed here by the sense of his own lack, 
he gently upbraids his wife for not having been more 
of an inspiration to him. Does he feel quite sure that 
if she had been different he would have succeeded 
better? Or does he seem to think that his life has 
been ruled by a sort of divine fate ? Or has he some 
suspicion that his own lack of will-power is responsible 
for it ? (See line 139.) His conclusion that God will 
reward or punish in the end, brings to his mind the 
fact that it will be safer if he is not too much rewarded 
in this world, and he falls into a reminiscence of his 
past life. What comes out in regard to his life to 
explain his feeling that it will be safer if he does not 
get too much award here ? He comes back to the 
present (line 175), and comparing Rafael's picture of 
the Virgin with his own for w^hich his wife sat, im- 
agines what men might say of these two pictures. 
This puts him in mind of another reminiscence about 
himself. What was it ? At the thought of this 
praise he ventures to grasp the chalk and correct the 



ART AND THE ARTIST I45 

arm in a picture of Rafael's. He had in his room a 
copy (see line 106). Why only does he care for the 
praise ? 

We come now to the closing scene, — the wife 
smiling because she hears the cousin's whistle; Andrea 
going on talking, so filled with his own thoughts that 
he thinks the smile for him, and feeling a litde encour- 
aged, asking her to come inside. Then he realizes the 
cousin has been calling. He recurs to his request made 
at the beginning of the poem, and repeats his promise : 
and what does he declare will be the best thing about 
the money he is to receive } Describe his final mood, 
his apology for his own sin, his vision of what he 
might do in heaven, and the recurring certainty that 
he would be ** overcome " because of his wife, 
Lucrezia, and, finally, the triumph of his love over 
every other thought in the words **^ as I choose," and 
ofhis unselfishness in his bidding her go to her cousin. 

Observe how, by indirections as it were, the wife's 
personality is clearly presented (see hnes 4, 20—33, 
38, 54-56, 74-75, 1 17-132, 166, 199-202, 219- 
223, 228, 241—243). Is Andrea more completely 
under one influence than Fra Lippo ? 

In "The Bishop Orders his Tomb," we have a 
connoisseur in art instead of an artist. As a mono- 
logue, this is not quite so complex as the preceding 
one, because it is almost entirely a revelation of the 
Bishop's own character, the ** nephews " whom he 
addresses not appearing as very strong personalities 
unless the old Bishop's fear that they would not exe- 
cute his orders be taken as an index of their character. 
Besides the Bishop's character, however, we learn 
something of the incidents ofhis life. What are these ? 
We get, furthermore, a vivid picture of the splendor of 



146 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

his tomb. Describe it. Observe all through the poem 
how subtly is portrayed in the Bishop the combination 
of human nature with its passions and hates and en- 
vies, and his churchly training that breaks out in 
pious exclamations from time to time ; also the jumble 
of Greek and Christian art he wishes to have in his 
tomb. In his ideal of his future enjoyment when he 
is dead (see Hne 80 and fol. ), do his pagan or his 
churchly instincts conquer ? Do you feel at the end 
that he is not going to get his tomb, or that he is, 
through a life of suspiciousness, afraid his ** nephews" 
will not carry out his orders in spite of all he offers 
them ? 

*« The Lady and the Painter" is a very simple 
poem cast in dialogue form to point a moral which is 
evidently the poet's own opinion. What is this 
opinion ? 

(Queries for Discussion, - — Is the manner of presen- 
tation in each case especially suited to the subject in 
hand ? 

Are all these monologues dramatic, in the sense that 
they show movement in events ? If they do not 
show movement in events, in what does their dramatic 
quality consist ? 

II. Topic for Paper ^ Classwork, or Private Study. 
— Sources and Allusions in relation to Subject- 
Matter. 

Hifits : — The poems in this group show a variety 
in the nature of the sources as well as a variety in the 
manner of treatment. Pictures in two cases were the 
sole source of inspiration, in another a group of statu- 
ary. In these instances the source is so intimately 
connected with the subject-matter, that in giving the 
manner of presentation, as in the preceding topic, all 



ART AND THE ARTIST 1 47 

is said about the sources and their relation to the poems 
that need be said. The remainder of the poems may 
be classified, broadly speaking, as deriving their sub- 
ject-matter from biographical sources, — namely, ** Fra 
Lippo Lippi," ** Andrea del Sarto," *' Pacchia- 
rotto ; " from an artistic emotion, in ** Old Pictures," 
'*The Lady and the Painter," and '*Face;" from 
historico-artistic conditions, in **Pictor Ignotus " and 
'* The Bishop Orders his Tomb." The direct bio- 
graphical source of ** Fra Lippo Lippi" is found in 
Vasari's ** Lives of the Italian Painters." As an ex- 
ample of how closely the poet modelled his facts upon 
those taken from Vasari, we may make the following 
comparisons (drawn from the Notes, *' Select Poems 
of Browning," published by T. Y. Crowell & Co.), 
*' The Carmelite Monk, Fra Filippo di Tommaso Lippi, 
was born in a bye street . . . behind the convent." 
See the poem, line 7. ** Cosimo de Medici, wishing 
him to execute a work in his own palace, shut him up, 
that he might riot waste his time in running about ; 
but having endured this confinement for two days he 
made ropes with the sheets of his bed ... let him- 
self down from the window . . . and for several days 
gave himself up to his amusements." See poem, lines 
15, 47. **By the death of his father he was left a 
friendless orphan at the age of two years ... for 
some time under the care of Mona Lapaccia, his aunt, 
who brought him up with very great difficulty till his 
eighth year, when being no longer able to support the 
burden, she placed him in the convent of the Car- 
melites. . . . Placed with others under the care of a 
master to . . . see what could be done with him^ in 
place of studying he never did anything but daub his 
books with caricatures, whereupon the prior deter- 



148 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

mined to give him . . . opportunity for learning to 
draw. The chapel, then newly painted by Masaccio 
... he frequented, and practising there — surpassed 
all the others . . . while still very young painted 
a picture in the cloister . . . with others in fresco 
. . . among these ** John the Baptist." See the poem, 
lines 81, 129, 136, 196. ** For the nuns of Sant' 
Ambrogio he painted a most beautiful picture." See 
the poem, line 345. Vasari says that by means of this 
picture he became known to Cosimo. Observe that 
this does not agree with the poem, as in that Lippo is 
already known to Cosimo when he promises to paint 
the picture of the coronation of the Virgin. It ap- 
pears that the poet is right here, and Vasari wrong. 
See notes to edition of Vasari cited below. Do you 
observe any other inaccuracies in the mere facts } 
From these extracts it m-ay be perceived that Brown- 
ing has turned a very dry record of events into a 
living reality, and how has he done this } By so 
seeing into the heart and impulses of the man that he 
re-creates his personahty and enables us to see life as 
it was seen by Lippo ? (For further study of the life 
of '* Lippo," see Mrs. Jameson's " Early Italian 
Painters," also Vasari's '* Lives," edited by E. H. & 
E. W. Blashfield and A. A. Hopkins, Chas. Scribner's 
Sons, N. Y.) Is there anv incident of Lippo's life 
which might have suggested to him the incident in 
the poem of the ** little lily thing " that encouraged 
him.? See hnes 370-387. 

Give an account of the allusions in the poem (see 
Camherwell Browning, Notes, Vol. V., p. 287), and 
show how they all grow naturally out of the subject- 
matter, that is, they do not come under the head of 
embellishments. Even the flower-songs, though they 



ART AND THE ARTIST 149 

add greatly to the beauty of the poem, come perfectly 
naturally from the lips of Fra Lippo. (For further in- 
formation as to these songs, see Poet-lore, Vol. II., 
p. 262, or Miss Alma Strettel's "Spanish and Italian 
Folk-Songs.") 

Vasari's ** Lives " furnished the source for the 
characterization of ** Andrea del Sarto " also. In this 
case, however, there is the added source of the picture 
of Andrea and his v/ife, which really forms the scene- 
setting and tone of the poem. (See Notes, Camber- 
well Browning, Vol. v., p. 289.) 

As in the case of " Lippo," extracts may be made 
from Vasari showing the facts that Browning trans- 
muted from dry bones into living realities. For ex- 
ample: ** He destroyed his own peace and estranged 
his friends by marrying Lucrezia di Baccio del Fede, 
a cap-maker's widow who ensnared him before her 
husband's death, and who delighted in trapping the 
hearts of men ... he soon became jealous and 
found that he had fallen into the hands of an artful 
woman who made him do as she pleased in all things 
. . . but although Andrea Hved in torment he yet 
accounted it a high pleasure." See poem, line i fol. 
**Art and nature combined to show all that may be 
done in painting when design, coloring, and invention 
unite in the same person. Had this master possessed 
a somewhat bolder and more elevated mind . . . 
he would have been without an equal. But there 
was a certain timidity of mind, a sort of diffidence 
and want of force in his nature, which rendered it 
impossible that . . . ardor and animation, which 
are proper to the more exalted character should ever 
appear in him. . . . His figures are well drawn . . . 
free from errors . . . the coloring exquisite." See 



150 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

poem, lines 60, 82, fol. ** Andrea understood the 
management of light and shade most perfectly, caus- 
ing the objects depicted to take their due degree of 
prominence or to retire within the shadows." See 
poem, line 98. *'If he had remained in Rome when 
he went thither to see the works of Raffaello and 
Michelagnolo . . . would eventually have attained 
the power of imparting a more elevated character 
and increased force to his figures . . . nay, there are 
not wanting those who affirm he would . . . have 
surpassed all the artists of his time . . . Raffaello 
and other young artists whom he perceived to possess 
great power . . . deprived Andrea, timid as he was, 
of courage to make trial of himself." See poem, line 
76 fol. **Two pictures he had sent into France, ob- 
taining much admiration from King Francis . . . 
that monarch was told he might prevail upon Andrea 
to visit France . . . the King therefore gave orders 
that a sum of money should be paid to Andrea for 
the expenses of the journey ... his arrival was 
marked by proofs of liberality and courtesy . . . 
his labors rendering him so acceptable to the King 
and the whole court, his departure from his native 
country appeared ... to have conducted him from 
wretchedness to felicity . . . But one day . . . 
came to him certain letters from Florence written to 
him by his wife . . . with bitter complaints . . . 
Moved by all this he resolved to resume his chain 
. . . Taking the money which the King confided to 
him for the purchase of pictures and statues ... he 
set off . . . having sworn on the gospels to return 
in a few months. Arrived in Florence, he lived 
joyously with his wife for some time, making presents 
to her father and sisters, but doing nothing for his 



ART AND THE ARTIST 151 

own parents, who died in poverty and misery. 
When the period specified by the King had come 
... he found himself at the end not only of his 
own money but ... of that of the King ... re- 
mained in Florence, therefore, procuring a livelihood 
as he best might." See poem, line 149, fol. Though 
not bearing on the poem in any way, it will be found 
interesting to read in the notes to the edition of 
Vasari already mentioned of the attempts which 
have been made to prove that the story of Andrea's 
embezzlement was false. In fact, the statement rests 
entirely upon Vasari's authority, and excellent reasons 
have been adduced to show that he might easily have 
been mistaken. 

Observe with what sympathetic insight Browning 
has looked at the miserable record of this man, and 
how he has emphasized whatever of nobleness there 
was in his character, making not the least noble thing 
about him his devotion to his wife, whom he was 
fated to love, whatever her faults might be. 

Are the allusions in this poem related to the sub- 
ject-matter in the same way as those in ** Fra Lippo 
Lippi " ? (For allusions, see Camberwell Browning, 
Notes, Vol. v., p. 289.) 

The story told in *' Pacchiarotto " is also derived 
from Vasari, and is to be found in the commentary 
of the Florence edition of his ** Lives " printed in 
1855. As an example of the way the poet has used 
his source in this poem, a few citations may be given : 

** Among the principal and most ardent of the 
Bardotti was our Giacomo, whose head was so turned 
by the whims and vagaries of the State, that among 
many of his foolish pranks, it is related, that in a 
room of his house which was situated on the Via 



152 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Laterino, he had painted many faces, so that, stand- 
ing in the midst of them, he appeared to be holding 
a long discussion, as if they in turn replied, and as 
their lord revered and honored him. 

This is expanded into the account which runs 
through seven stanzas (see v.-xi.) besides being led up 
to by the four preceding stanzas. Point out the am- 
plifications Browning has made upon this hint. 

** During the exile of Fabio and the murder of 
Alessandro Bichi, a new sect of people sprung up in 
Siena, who from their open avowals of lawless prin- 
ciples were called the Libertines. These, having 
become arrogant, on account of success having been 
on their side in every faction against the tyrants of the 
city, as they called them, and even against foreign 
enemies, these Libertines therefore meddled with 
every important scheme of the Republic, and tried 
to gain all the honors and high offices for them- 
selves. . . . They called upon the common people 
to aid them, making many promises to help them in 
return, which was the occasion that the common 
people and artisans of lowest extraction were turned 
aside from their daily life, and their time occupied in 
attending meetings where they listened to incendiary 
language against the affairs of the State. . . . Out of 
these meetings sprung the Congregation or Academy 
called the Bardotti, a name which really had no 
other significance than that which they chose to give 
it: an easy hfe at the pubhc expense." Compare 
this with stanzas xiii. and xiv. 

" The Bardotti, believing circumstances to be of 
bad augury for them, had recourse to the aid and 
counsels of a few citizens who formerly had favored 
them ; but receiving from them only reproofs for their 



ART AND THE ARTIST 153 

misdeeds, and no promises to protect them from 
justice, and terrified by their impending fate, they fled 
and hid themselves. II Pacchiarotto, likewise, seized 
with great terror, wandered about like one demented 
throughout the city, thinking the sheriff w^as always 
dogging his footsteps in order to seize him and take 
him to prison. Finally he went into the parish 
church of San Giovanni, and saw a tomb where but 
recently had been covered a dead body ; he pushed 
it aside, and fixed himself there as best he could, and 
covered the tomb over with the stone. Here he 
remained in intense suffering of mind and body during 
two days, at the end of which time, half dead with 
hunger and the insupportable stench of the corpse, 
and covered with vermin, he fled through one of the 
gates of the city, which leads to the house of refuge 
of the brothers of the Observance. 11 Pacchiarotto, 
when he thought the storm had passed, quietly re- 
turned to Siena, and, having been made aware by 
bitter experience what his follies had cost him, he 
resolved to apply himself to his work and no longer 
meddle with the affairs of State." 

Compare this with stanzas xvi.— xx. See also 
xxiii. At stanza xx. the poet declares he is going 
to let his fancy have rein in the admonishment of the 
Abbot. What is this admonishment, and how does 
the poet make Pacchiarotto reply ? Does this poem 
lose in artistic force because of the fact that the inci- 
dent is told and enlarged upon, simply to furnish a text 
tor a philippic against critics ? This poem has a great 
many allusions, for explanation of which see Camber- 
well Browni?ig, Notes, Vol. IX., p. 294, Point out 
how they are related to the subject-matter. 

In '* Old Pictures in Florence '* the direct source 



154 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

might be said to be the incident of the poet's missing 
an art treasure which fell into some one else's hands. 
However, this is, in reality, only a sort of stage fix- 
ture throwing a side light of humor over the whole 
poem, the true source being the poet's own artistic 
enthusiasm for the works of the old painters, and out 
of this grow his appreciations and his criticisms. 
Would the poem have been any stronger as a criticism 
of art if he had not toned it to this humorous incident? 
Does this incident, on the other hand, give the poem an 
artistic value it might not otherwise have by making 
the thoughts that cluster around it less didactic ? Are 
they less didactic because they really grow out of an 
emotional mood rather than a critical one ? 

In **Face" the artistic appreciation of a beautiful 
face gives rise to the imaging of the face as it would 
look in a picture. 

An emotion of indignation at those who wear bird's 
feathers in their hats and at those who object to the 
nude in art is the source of the dialogue, in ''The 
Lady and the Painter," between an imaginary painter 
and an imaginary lady. Does it result in a very 
convincing argument either way ? 

In the two remaining poems, ** Pictor Ignotus " 
and "The Bishop Orders his Tomb," the characters 
are imaginary, but they are set in an environment, and 
their personality is such that they belong to an especial 
historical epoch. The sources of such poems as these 
are in the knowledge of all the forces that go to the 
making of a certain period, —in this case, that of the 
Renaissance in Italy. The Bishop is the type of 
character that might be produced by the influences at 
work. What were these ? (^qq Camberzuell Brozvn- 
ingy Notes, Vol. V., 291, Introduction, p. xvi, fol. 



ART AND THE ARTIST 155 

For further information, see Ruskin's ** Stones of 
Venice," Symonds's *' The Italian Renaissance," and 
Vernon Lee's '* Italian Studies.") 

Observe how completely this Renaissance spirit is 
made to breathe forth through the character of one 
single man, and how completely the age dominates 
the personality of the man. Notice that the poem is 
headed **Rome, 15 — " Did the Renaissance move- 
ment differ in any of its characteristics here from those 
in other Italian cities ? 

In ** Pictorlgnotus " there is portrayed a personality 
as different from the Bishop's as could well be im- 
agined. How does it happen that he, too, is a picture 
of the Renaissance ? The same two influences are 
seen in him, are they not ? — in his choosing to paint 
religious pictures and in his desire to paint life ? But 
in this case the personality of the man is stronger than 
the age, and he deliberately chooses to suppress in him- 
self the aspiration toward painting human life, not 
because he would consider it any less noble art, but 
because he reverences it so that he could not bear to 
subject it to just the sort of frivolous criticism that a 
bishop might give it. Whereas in the Bishop 
churchly traditions were but a matter of form, in the 
painter of *^ Pictor Ignotus " religion had entered 
into his very soul. (For further information, see books 
referred to above. ) Give an account of all the allusions, 
and show in these latter poems how close the relation 
is between them arid the subject-matter, and how 
many of them are introduced simply as embellishments 
to the language. 

Queries for Discussion. — Is the poet justified in 
interpreting facts of history or biography to suit the 
needs of artistic presentation as he does in the poems 



156 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

on Andrea and Lippo, for example ? Upon this 
point Mr. Artliur Symons has to say : ** Whether the 
picture which suggested the poem is an authentic 
work of Andrea, or whether — as experts are now 
pretty well agreed — it is a work by an unknown 
artist representing an imaginary man and woman, is, 
of course, of no possible consequence in connection 
with the poem. Nor is it of any more importance 
that the Andrea of Vasari is in all probability not the 
real Andrea. Historic fact has nothing to do with 
poetry : it is mere material, the mere quarry of ideas ; 
and the real truth of Mr. Browning's portrait of 
Andrea would no more be impugned by the establish- 
ment of Vasari' s inaccuracy, than the real truth of 
Shakespeare's portrait of Macbeth by the proof of the 
untrustworthiness of Holinshed." 

In which of these poems is the source most closely 
related to the subject-matter, and in which of them 
does the poet's imagination hold the largest place ? 

Along what different lines does the imagination 
work in these various poems ? 

III. Topic for Papery Classzuork, or Private Study. 
— The Relations of Art to Character in Browning's 
Artist Portraits. 

Hints: — The unknown painter of ** Pictor Igno- 
tus," Fra Lippo, Andrea del Sarto, and the Bishop of 
St. Praxed's step to the front upon the mention of 
Browning's artist portraits. We see at once that 
they represent four entirely different types of men. 
How would you describe their respective personalities 
as gathered from the poems ? How is it made evi- 
dent that the unknown artist was a man of- transcen- 
dent genius ? Besides this, he was a lover of humanity, 
was he not ? How is this shown ? Was he a lover 



ART AND THE ARTIST 157 

of humanity as it is, or rather as he thought it ought 
to be ? Is there any touch of conceit in the desire 
that he should be loved on account of his pictures ? 
Would you consider him a stronger character if he had 
done the best that was in him, regardless of how 
humanity might talk or act ? Or do you feel that his 
sensitiveness in regard to the need of loving human 
appreciation and sympathy is a peculiarly refined aspect 
of his nature ? Is it not a feeling natural to the great 
artist to revolt against the thought of the commercializ- 
ing of his art ? In speaking of this poem Mr. Symons 
says he '* has dreamed of painting great pictures and 
winning great fame, but shrinks equally from the at- 
tempt and the reward : an attempt which he is too 
self-distrustful to make, a reward which he is too 
painfully discriminating to enjoy." Do you perceive 
anything in the poem to indicate that he was too 
** distrustful " of himself to make the attempt to 
paint } Does he not rather seem absolutely certain of 
his own powers ? (line 2—3, " No bar stayed me," 
"Never did fate forbid me," etc.) The reason he 
did not make the attempt was because he so reverenced 
art and his own gift of art that he could not subject it 
to the gross atmosphere of daily, worldly life, and so 
he chose to imprison his genius in monotonous frescos 
for the church ; why ? Not certainly because he 
desired to serve God this way, but because these 
pictures would be safe from the rude intrusion of un- 
sympathetic humanity. Does he seem to regret his 
decision, or is he satisfied that fame would have been 
a poor exchange for the consciousness he possesses of 
a genius preserved unsullied from the world ? Com- 
pare him with Aprile in " Paracelsus," Part II., lines 
420-487. Observe that Aprile would have hked to 



158 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

be translated to heaven when he finished his work, 
while this unknown painter wished to linger on earth. 
What is the difference in these two natures ? Is it that 
one wished to give out love by means of his art, and 
the other wished to draw love to himself by means of 
his art ? Which would be the more human, and 
which the more religious or aspiring attitude ? 

Has Fra Lippo any sensitiveness of nature ? He is 
a lover of human life, like the unknown painter, but 
there is a difference. Is it that the unknown painter 
loves the soul, — the hopes, passions, aspirations of 
man, — while Lippo we discover to be an adorer of the 
physically beautiful? Are his arguments in favor of 
the beauty of the flesh convincing ? Notice that while 
he emphasizes external beauty, he by no means ignores 
the soul ; although he says, ** if you get simple 
beauty and nought else you get about the best thing 
God invents," in the same breath he says he never 
saw beauty with no soul at all. Yet the "soul" of 
beauty that Lippo sees is not quite the same as the 
soul the unknown painter sees, because one recognizes 
the divine essence of beauty, the other the divine 
essence of human aspiration or religion. Which of 
these do you think is the larger conception of soul, or 
does either of them include the other ? Might there 
be a third attitude larger still which would include 
both ? 

While Lippo's nature is certainly not sensitive, does 
he not possess a certain amount of timidity through 
his early ecclesiastical training ? How does this 
come out ? Does his moral looseness come naturally 
from his artistic attitude ? Does he give you the im- 
pression of being a bad man, that is, a man with 
design to do as much harm as possible, or an impul- 



ART AND THE ARTIST 159 

sive man, filled with the joy of mere physical exist- 
ence, and unable to resist the pleasures of an occasional 
worldly frolic ? In his revolt against the asceticism 
of the early Church, he naturally goes too far the 
other way. Are his theories of realism in advance of 
his practices in life ? Observe that in spite of his 
realism he has an idealistic tendency, for he says we 
must beat nature. Is he right when he says, " We 
love first when we see them painted, things we have 
passed perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see " ? 
Do you agree with him that beauty of form is neces- 
sary for the highest expression of soul? Do you agree 
with him that more of a spiritual uplift may be gained 
from the presentation of beautiful form than from pic- 
tures with an avowed didactic purpose I (See lines 

317-335.) 

*' Andrea del Sarto " has neither the idealism of 
the unI<nown painter nor the joy in life of Lippo. 
He is depressed yet philosophical over the lack of 
power he feels in himself. How is this made evi- 
dent ? He points out just what his failures are, but 
are his complaints at all bitter .? He has a vision of 
what he might have done had his wife given him true 
love and sympathy, but he seems to feel that such 
thoughts are vain, because it was she whom he per- 
force must love. It has been suggested that he could 
scarcely be justified in blaming his wife for his failures in 
life, for the fault w^as with him in pouring his affection 
upon so shallow and soulless a woman. But might it 
not be said, in reply to this, that love if genuine is 
given in spite of whatever faults the loved one may 
have ? 

Could any amount of love on his part justify his 
stealing in order to gratify Lucrezia's whims or his 



l6o BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

looking over her flirtations with other men ? Yet 
even in a New Jerusalem he cannot imagine himself 
painting without his passion for Lucrezia, and this he 
feels will drag him down, and he will always be sur- 
passed by Leonardo, Rafael, and Agnolo, who have 
no wives. On the other hand, is not his love for 
Lucrezia the finest point in his character, its constancy, 
its efFacement of self even to the point of sinning for 
her sake ? The question is whether this is strength of 
love or weakness of character. Is there anything to be 
said of Lucrezia except that she is utterly detestable ? 

Does he give correct impressions of his own work ? 
Are his criticisms of the other artists and his compari- 
sons of his own work with theirs good ? In the case 
both of Lippo and Andrea, has Browning conceived 
their personaHties partly from the character of their 
paintings ? 

Do you feel sympathetic with Andrea as Browning 
has presented him, or disgusted with him ? His love 
was so powerful a force in his character that his will 
was weakened. If the fates had decreed that he 
should love one whose sympathy would have strength- 
ened his will, he might have accomplished that of 
which he dreamed, but after all is said, he seems to 
feel that his love is of more importance to him than 
anything else. Is this turn a characteristic one with 
Browning ? 

In contrast with these three, for all of whom we feel 
sympathy for one reason or another, the Bishop ap- 
pears as an utterly unlovable old man. He loves art 
and even his church solely for the sake of the personal 
glory he can get out of it. Show how this is brought 
out. 

A still worse feeling is his rivalry with old Gandolf, 



ART AND THE ARTIST i6l 

and his desire to rouse his old enemy's everlasting envy 
with his tomb. Has he one single redeeming quality ? 
(For further remarks on the Bishop, see Programme on 
"The Prelate.") 

Queries for Discussion. — Is it shown in all of these 
poems that the man affects his art more than he is 
affected by it ? 

Which of these artists are portrayed with the most 
consistency ? Do Lippo and Andrea branch out into 
abstract artistic principles not in keeping with their 
character ? 

If there are any such flights, is it not quite natural 
for human beings in their best moments of thought to 
express ideals far beyond their general practice .'' 

IV. Topic for Papery Ciasswork, or Private Study. 
— Art Criticism in Browning's Art Poems. 

Hi?its : — The art monologues may all be taken 
as illustrating different periods in the growth of art, 
while in tw^o of them the speaker presents all there 
is to be said for his especial manifestation • in art. 
In ** Old Pictures in Florence" the early Christian 
artists receive directly from the poet their due share 
of appreciation, especially as contrasted with the 
Greek art. In *' Fra Lippo Lippi " the reahst in 
revolt against those very pioneer Christian artists is 
made to defend his ground and to show the idealism 
lurking in realism. Andrea, again, stands for formal- 
ism, his best defence being that the artists who are 
perfect ifi technique though lacking in inspiration at 
least do the best they can. Besides the defence of 
the early Christian artists in ** Old Pictures in 
Florence," there is implied in the poem that all 
exponents and schools of art are related parts of the 
general scheme of man's growth. That the poet 
II 



l62 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

is in sympathy with all schools is shown by his 
masterly presentation in these various poems of the 
claims of each. This artistic creed receives further 
exemplification in the " Parleyings," in that with 
** Gerard de Lairesse," whose special characteristic 
was the embellishment of every-day nature with 
borrowed classical imaginings. (See Camberwell 
Browning, Notes, Vol. XII., p. 344.) Browning, 
in talking with Gerard, comes to the conclusion (see 
stanzas xiii. to end) that while art should go on to 
ever-fresh manifestations and should not try to re- 
suscitate the past, yet past art manifestations are not 
to be thrown away, but preserved for their worth as 
the blossoming of past phases of growth. Professor 
Daniel Dorchester, writing of Browning's Philosophy 
of Art, says : ^* An art critic, intent only upon literal 
accuracy, would not accept the judgments expressed 
in these poems without many quaHfications. He 
would cite, for example, the frescoes of Andrea del 
Sarto in the entrance court of Santa Annunciata in 
Florence, — their great dignity, their fresh passion 
and imagination, as evidence that Andrea was more 
than the clever realist Browning has described. 
Sandro, better known as Botticelli, is classified by 
Browning in his * Old Pictures in Florence * with 
Giotto, Taddeo Gaddi, and Cimabue, but Botticelli 
was a pupil of Fra Lippo Lippi, who ushered in 
the next period of Italian art. Many such criticisms 
might be made, but they do not invalidate the truth 
of Browning's art poems. His principle of classi- 
fication transcends such minor distinctions, and is 
concerned with the exemplification in art of certain 
types of character. Andrea del Sarto, it is true, oc- 
casionally rises to a great dignity of expression, but 



ART AND THE ARTIST 163 

the general level of his art was low, stereotyped, and 
sordid. Botticelli, though a pupil of Lippi, had a 
strong individuality, and belonged in spirit to the 
school of Giotto. Few painters have made every 
part of their work so tributary to an idea, or striven 
more earnestly after ideal beauty. 

"In the poem, < Old Pictures in Florence,' Brown- 
ing shows that romantic art 'in its crude form is 
superior to Greek art in its perfection, simply because 
it manifests a higher ideal of the human soul. He 
is not unmindful of the glory of the Grecian character 
and art. The very atmosphere in which the Greeks 
lived was pellucid, and their thought was like it. 
They had, too, an intense love of sensuous beauty 
... so nurtured that it became their master passion. 
. . . The spirit of man for a time saw its ideal real- 
ized in the grand and beautiful forms of the Grecian 
divinities. 

'* But no sensuous representation, however excellent, 
could long seem an adequate expression to the de- 
veloping soul of man. 

'* Spirit alone can satisfy spirit, and only in its own 
realm, the inner realm of the soul, can it find its 
true reality. In the decadence of Grecian art in pro- 
portion as there was a surrender to outer vision and 
as bodily charm was sought as an end, the human spirit 
turned its gaze inward and communed with its own 
loftier ideals. . . . Then Christianity came, insisting 
upon the Divine Spirit as the absolute ideal, and glori- 
fying the soul at the expense of the body if need be." 
This spiritual beauty 'Mt was the mission of romantic 
art to reveal." (Boston Browning Society Papers.) 

Observe further that Lippo and Andrea represent 
two different but actual types of the artists of the 



164 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Renaissance, while <* Pictor Ignotus " and the 
** Bishop " represent two imaginary types of Renais- 
sance artists, neither of whom takes any active part 
in the development of art. Should you say that the 
former stood for the utmost idealism of this great 
movement, and the latter for its utmost grossness ? 
(^For studies of the Renaissance, see books cited above 
and " Renaissance Pictures in Robert Browning's 
Poetry," Poet-lore^ Vol. X., pp. 66-76, Jan. 1898.) 

By thus presenting these different types does 
Browning indicate more clearly than in any other 
way the complexity of this movement ? 

In ** Pacchiarotto " we have a criticism of the art- 
critic rather than of art, and although the application 
is made to point at literary cridcs, the principle would 
apply just as well to art-critics, and this fundamental 
principle is that critics cannot make all artists conform 
to their notions of art any more than Pacchiarotto 
could reform the world and make everybody toe 
the mark according to his own notions, — in other 
words, that the true artist or genius always transcends 
the cut and dried rules of the cridcs. What corner 
of art criticism is touched upon in "The Lady and 
the Painter" ? For further expression of opinion on 
this subject, see the ** Parleyings," that with ** Francis 
Furini," through stanza vii., also xi., line 557 to end. 

Queries for Discussion. — Is Browning's theory 
that art should find its own new expression with every 
phase of life sound ? Is it opposed to the generally 
accepted theory that there are definite standards in art ? 

Is Greek art so little expressive of aspiration as 
Browning seems to think in *' Old Pictures in 
Florence" ? 

Might it be said that to-day we can get more of a 



ART AND THE ARTIST 165 

spiritual vision from Greek art by reading into its 
perfect form our own ideals, while in the early 
Christian art the poverty of form makes us see only 
the ascetic ideal of the early Christian ? 

V. Topic for Paper ^ Classworky or Private Study, 
— The Workmanship of the Poems. 

Hi fits : — Notice the stanza-form of** The Guardian 
Angel." It is made up of a quatrain, a couplet, and 
an extra line binding the stanza together by rhyming 
with the first and third of the quatrain. Do you 
observe any other point about the rhyming } How 
many accents are there to the line ? Js the verse so 
regular that it may easily be scanned by feet ? What is 
the metre, and are there any irregularities ? Upon 
what does this poem depend chiefly for its music, — 
harmonious combinations of words, alliteration, smooth 
rhythm, or figures of speech ? 

Does the apparently careless cleverness of the rhymes 
and the familiar, personal, almost chatting tone of 
** Old Pictures" cheapen the dignity of its philoso- 
phy, or does it accord with the poet's conception of 
the poem as a whole and add to its originality and 
effectiveness ? How many accents are there to the 
line? and what is the rhyme-scheme? Are there 
any departures from the alternately rhyming lines of 
the opening stanzas, or any irregularities in the 
accents ? Are there, any rhymes you consider faulty 
or extravagant ? If there are such to you, when 
taken separately, can you, upon study of the context 
and the air of the whole, show that they fall in well 
in their places as related to the rest of the poem ? 
What figures are there in the poem ? Examine the 
appropriateness of each to the design of the poem and 
to the sense, in its place. 



l66 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

'* Pictor Ignotus " is made up of quatrains all joined 
together in one long paragraph. The effect of this is 
to make the verse flow continuously from beginning 
to end, without the usual breaks in the thought caused 
by the division into stanzas. What is the metre in 
this ? Point out any variations you may perceive. 
There are many beautiful poetic figures in this poem ; 
point . them out, also the lines where alliteration 
occurs. 

Notice that the difference in management of subject- 
matter between **01d Pictures" and "Andrea del 
Sarto" and ** Fra Lippo Lippi " is matched by a 
corresponding difference in workmanship. Although 
a colloquial air is given the first poem by its easy pace 
and rhymes, " Fra Lippo" is decidedly more repre- 
sentative of easy talking, as it should be to convey its 
sense of dramatic dialogue and incident. How is this 
effect secured ? Notice that it is in blank verse, not 
rhyme, and that its blank verse is facile, not stately. 
Is this effect produced by the character of the language 
and the shortness of the sentences ? How does 
** Andrea del Sarto" differ? Is it more like "Old 
Pictures " or " Fra Lippo" as to its style of verse .? 
How does it differ from both ? How is the quieter 
style of Andrea effected .? Is it suited to the subject- 
matter ? Examine and explain the appropriateness of 
the figures. 

Observe the difference in the atmosphere of 
** Lippo " and ** Andrea," — Lippo, sort of devil- 
may-care, breaking out every now and then into an 
Italian love-song. 

Compare the blank verse of '* The Bishop Orders 
his Tomb" with that of the other two blank-verse 
poems, and observe here the different atmosphere. Is 



ART AND THE ARTIST 167 

it due to any difference in the structure of the verse, or 
simply to the language put into the Bishop's mouth? 
Compare the different stanza forms of **Deaf and 
Dumb," " Eurydice to Orpheus," and ** Face," 
pointing out their different rhyme schemes, their 
rhythms, and the character of the language, whether 
principally realistic or figurative. ** Pacchiarotto " is 
a decided contrast with all the other poems, with its 
three-stressed lines and double and triple rhymes all 
through. Mr. Symons says of this poem: *'The 
story is funny enough in itself, and it points an ex- 
cellent moral ; but it is chiefly interesting as a whim- 
sical freak of verse, an extravaganza in staccato. The 
rhyming is of its kind simply perfect. ... I think all 
other experiments of the kind, however successful as a 
whole, let you see now and then that the author has 
had a hard piece of work to keep up his appearance of 
ease. In ' Pacchiarotto,' there is no evidence of 
the strain." In the one remaining poem, ** The Lady 
and the Painter," what are the verse characteristics .? 

Queries for Discussioji, — Is blank verse better suited 
for the presentation of character than rhymed verse, 
because of the entire freedom it gives in the construc- 
tion of sentences of any length ? Has " Pictor 
Ignotus," in spite of its rhymes, something of the 
freedom of blank verse ? 

Do you find Browning's blank verse in these poems 
marked by much variation in the distribution of short 
syllables and of cssural pauses ? 



Music and Musicians 

Page 

Vol. Text Note 

*' A Toccata of Galuppi's" iv 48 369 

<' Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha" iv 133 382 

«<AbtVogler" v 169 308 

** Parley! ngs" with " Charles Avison " . . . xii 154 349 

<< The Founder of the Feast" xii 278 382 

Compare David in '< Saul," iv. 66, Notes, 375; lines 942-973 
and 1566-1689 in '' Fifine at the Fair," ix, 72, Notes, 288. 

I. Topic for Paper y Classzuorky or Private Study. 
— The Material and its Modelling. 

Hints : — A short account of the gist of each poem 
may be found in the Notes, Camberwell Brozuiiingy 
as given above. 

Of this group of poems how many of them have 
to do with actual musicians ? (See notes to the 
poems as given above. For further information, see 
Grove's ** Dictionary of Music and Musicians;" 
also papers by Mrs. Alexander Ireland on '* A Toc- 
cata of Galuppi's," by Miss Helen J. Ormerod on 
**Abt Vogler the Man" and "Andrea del Sarto 
and Abt Vogler," "Some Notes on Browning's 
Poems Referring to Music," by Mrs. Turnbull on 
** Abt Vogler." These are all suggestive papers, 
though full of inaccuracies on technical musical points 
which must be guarded against, and colored too much 
in their interpretations by the supposition that the 



MUSIC AND MUSICIANS 169 

compositions in the poems must be regarded as 
beautiful specimens of musical art. ) 

It will be found that the relation of the musician to 
the poem he figures in varies considerably with the 
different poems. For instance, in **A Toccata of 
Galuppi's" it is a particular composition of this 
master that starts the train of thought; in ** Master 
Hugues" it is a particular form of composition; in 
" Abt Vogler " the man and his relation as creator 
to his music is the inspiration, while in ** Charles 
Avison " a special composition again gives rise to the 
conversation with its composer. In only one of 
these poems is the musician whose name appears the 
speaker; which is it? Who is the speaker in the 
other cases ? The language made use of in these 
poems is so full of musical technicalities that, as a 
preHminary to their proper comprehension, it is neces- 
sary to explain these allusions. (For those in ** A 
Toccata," see Carnberwell Browtiingy Notes, Vol. 
IV., p. 369.) 

This poem opens by the speaker's directly address- 
ing Galuppi as to the meaning he perceives in his 
music. What does he declare is all that he can get 
out of this old music? Describe the picture of Venice 
and its life which the music calls up. Is this pic- 
ture of Venice true to the life at the time when 
Galuppi lived ? (See ** Venice : An Historical Sketch," 
by Horatio E. Brown, chap. xxii. ) 

Notice that the various modulations are made by 
the speaker to fit in with definite moods of the 
Venetian belles and beaux he is^'imaging. What is the 
general tenor of these moods, — thoughdess joyous- 
ness, or gayety with an undercurrent of fear ? In 
stanza xi. the speaker makes a reflection upon the 



fact that he thought he had wrung a secret from 
nature ; what does he mean by this ? 

Possibly he means that whenever he tries to be- 
lieve that there was some immortal element even in 
the frivolous life of Venice, Galuppi's cold music 
dissipates it all by speaking to him only of its decay 
and death. If that is true of Venice, why not of 
himself too? The music does not comfort him with 
anything better than a sarcastic fling at his knowledge 
of physics and geology. Might a wider application 
of the thought be made here, namely, that soul is 
not revealed any more in present-day culture than 
it was in the frivolity of eighteenth-century Venice } 
Is there any indication that the speaker finds the 
music of Galuppi beautiful ? What do we learn of 
the character of the speaker ? What seems to be the 
mood induced in the listener by Galuppi's music? 
Do you suppose that Galuppi was in a dismal mood 
when he wrote it, or is its effect on the modern 
listener due solely to its old-fashioned quality ? 

Mrs. Ireland, writing of this poem in the London 
Browning Society Papers, says : — 

** We feel assured that the Toccata treated of in 
Browning's poem must have possessed considerable 
light and shade, for while its joyous lightness "con- 
jured up before the listener's mind the bewildering 
vision of festal scenes in ancient Venice, while it drew 
around him the balmy night of May, the intoxicating 
fragrance of roses and love and youth, the atmosphere 
surcharged with fulness of sensuous life, there were 
yet thrilling and tender cadences, surely some strains 
that had a 'dying fall,' dissonances even, powerful 
enough to interpose, with obtrusiveness, grim doubts 
in the very heart and core of the charmed moment — 



MUSIC AND MUSICIANS 171 

doubts transient, quickly put aside or stifled, but 
ghastly in their suggestion of impending change, 
doom, and death." 

This opinion is based upon the supposition that 
the music is a direct reflection of the gay life of the 
time, with its underlying sense of decay, while from 
our previous study of the poem it would appear that 
the music does not reflect the life directly, but only 
through associations in the mind of the listener, who 
finds the Toccata anything but gay. He also im- 
plies that while the suspensions and diminished 
sevenths may have told them something, they did not 
tell him anything. These intervals when used by the 
more modern harmonic writers produce rich effects, 
but by the earlier polyphonic writers they were apt 
to be used in a sort of wooden and mechanical way. 

In *' Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha " we get more 
of the present scene than in **A Toccata." Is this 
done by any direct descriptions, or by means of side 
remarks which the organist lets fall as he is struggling 
with the fugue? (For a sketch of fugue-form, see 
Notes, Cambe?-zuell Browning, Vol. IV., p. 382.) 

What do we learn of the scene of the poem in the 
first ftvj stanzas ? What is the organist bent on dis- 
covering in the fugue of this composer ? What sort 
of a composition is this fugue, as described by Brown- 
ing ? Compare the description in the poem with the 
account of a fugue given in the Notes. What con- 
clusion does the organist at first come to in regard to 
the fugue ? Notice the comparison with the gilt roof 
of the church over which is stretched a spider's web. 
What moral of life suggests itself to him as a result of 
this comparison as to the moral possibly meant by the 
composer? This conclusion not being exactly com- 



172 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

plimentary to the fugue, how does he counteract it in 
stanzas xxv. and xxvi. ? Returning to the fugue, 
what does he declare finally in regard to the moral ? 
What puts an end to his playing ? Why does he turn 
from the fugue to Palestrina ? Palestrina was the first 
to release music from the dry formalism into which it 
had fallen in the hands of the contrapuntal writers ; 
it would, therefore, be a marked contrast to the fugue 
he had been playing and a relief to his feelings. It 
has been also proposed that Palestrina represents the 
noble music of the Church, which did not obscure the 
truth by its over-elaboration. Is this a good sugges- 
tion } Was over-elaboration a marlc of secular music 
as opposed to that of the Church ? 

In these two poems is it the personality of the com- 
poser or that of the one playing and speaking which 
dominates the tone of the poem ? What mental picture 
do you form of their characters ? 

In **Abt Vogler " we get an inside view of the 
creator of music, — not as in the other poems merely 
of an interpreter. The musician himself speaks, 
giving expression to the thoughts which have arisen 
in him as he extemporizes. What does Abt Vogler 
compare his music to in the first verse ? What is the 
story of Solomon and his palace ? (Dr. Berdoe 
says : ** Jewish legend gave Solomon sovereignty 
over the demons, and a lordship over the powers of 
nature. In the Moslem East these fables have found 
a resting-place in much of its literature from the Koran 
onwards. Solomon was thought to have owed his 
power over the spiritual world to the possession of a 
seal on which the * most great name of God was 
engraved.' " See Lane, "Arabian Nights," Introd., 
note 2 1, and chapter i., note 15.) 



MUSIC AND MUSICIANS 173 

What is Vogler's first desire in regard to the 
music ? How does he enlarge in stanzas ii. and iii. 
on the idea that the keys are the slaves of his will ? 
What special appropriateness is there in speaking of 
notes in music as ** eager to do, and die" ? What 
myths are there as to the raising of walls by music ? 
(For a comparison of music with architecture, see 
**The Boundaries of Music and Poetry," by Ambros.) 
What visions does he seem to see as he rears his palace 
of sound ? What contrast does he make between 
painting, poetry, and music, in stanza vi. ? In stanza 
vii. he declares that music is a direct inspiration 
untrammelled by laws. Is the Abbe right about this, 
or is he carried away by his enthusiasm for his own 
art ? When it is remembered that it took man four 
thousand odd years to find out that it was agreeable 
to sound three notes together in a chord, does it not 
seem somewhat exaggerated to call it ** the fiash of the 
will that can" ? Would it be more profound and 
none the less wonderful to call it the long struggle of 
the ** will that can." How does the Abbe illustrate 
his point here .? What does he mean by calling a 
chord in music a star ? (See explanation given in 
Notes, Ca?nberzveil B7'ow?iifigyTp. T,o().) Furthermore, 
it may be said that a chord in music is like a piece of 
polished stone which aids in the building of the art 
edifice, and the flash of the individual will does indeed 
come in as the good Abbe rears his palace of sound 
(viii.). Upon realizing that his palace of music is 
gone, Vogler falls into a train of reflection. He first 
asks what comfort it is to him that other palaces as 
fine may be reared again, for he clings to the idea of 
permanency, — what was, shall be. What does he 
give as his belief in regard to good and evil in stanzas 



ix. and x. ? In xi., what attitude does he take in 
regard to the failures of life as compared with discords 
in music ? 

A discord in music is an interval which must be 
resolved ; that is, followed by a concord. A piece 
of music, though it may begin with a discord, or, in 
technical language, a dissonance, must always end 
with a concord. Contrary to the impression given in 
the line, discords are not the enemies of harmony, 
but its stanch allies. They do not exist merely to 
make concords more prized ; they exist because they 
are beautiful in themselves and beautiful in relation 
to concords. 

Upon what is the faith of the Abbe founded, reason 
or intuition ? *' God has a few of us whom he whis- 
pers in the ear." '*'Tis we musicians know!" 
What is the mood expressed in the last stanza, and 
how does he illustrate it by means of musical symbol- 
ism ? (See Notes.) 

In ** Charles Avison" the poet himself undis- 
guisedly has a little talk with the once well-known 
English musician. How does he introduce the subject ? 
Does it strike you as being a perfectly natural train of 
thought leading up to the subject, or does the transi- 
tion from the introductory ruminations to the subject 
proper seem forced on account of the pun ? It 
has the advantage at least of giving us a mental picture 
of the poet at his window this cold March morning 
watching the black-cap, while his active mind flies 
from thought to thought, weaving this interesting and 
profoundly philosophical poem. Observe how his 
imagination plays about the thought of Avison' s March 
as it did about the black-cap. At stanza iv. he comes 
down to solid fact, and gives a description of the March 



MUSIC AND MUSICIANS 175 

in musical parlance. What other early musicians 
come to Browning's mind as a result of his thinking of 
Avison's March, and how does he give us a glimpse 
of the musical controversies of the day ? (For further 
information on these, see junder names of musicians 
mentioned in Grove's ** Dictionary of Music and 
Musicians" and Naumann's "History of Music") 
In stanza v. what musical problem presents itself to 
him when he compares Avison's "evidence" with 
his own feelings ? In stanza vi. he tackles the solution 
of the problem. He starts with a premise that no 
truer truth is obtainable bv man than comes of music, 
but before proving this, he goes on to show first what 
music cannot do. How does he attempt to define 
the soul, and what illustrative image does he use ? 

This digression on the nature of the soul leads up 
to, and emphasizes the point the poet wishes to make ; 
namely, that music is more distinctively than any other 
art the one which gives form to the moods, hates, 
loves, joys, etc., of the soul, and her triumph 
would be complete if the forms in which music is cast 
had an element of permanence in them. 

This truth of the soul, then, is the truth that music 
gives to man, is it not ? What does he say is the 
hitch which balks her of full triumph ? And how 
does music compare with the other arts in its power 
to give permanent expression to a feeling? While 
she ** dredges " deeper than the other arts, she seems 
even less able than they to give a permanent form, as 
he shows by remarking upon the fact that the popular- 
ity of the old composer wanes as the new one comes 
into view. His mood changes at stanza ix. Instead 
of noting the ever-new invasion, he facetiously imagines 
himself re-enlivening Avison's old March with modern 



176 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

musical appliances. Note the symbol he uses and his 
description of how he will change the march. At 
stanza x. he grows serious again, and tells Avison not 
to fear any such irreverent innovation. In stanza xi. 
he quiets his doubts with the decision that even if the 
soul seeks ever-new forms of expression in music, 
still what has once lived can never die (compare with 
Abt Vogler's "There shall never be one lost good," 
line 69). But what must we do in order to appre- 
ciate the great musicians of the past ? 

Yet, again, before rejoicing over this decision the 
voice of doubt must be listened to. The poet does 
not believe that past knowledge is all futile, that it 
was only ignorance instead of knowledge in the bud 
destined to blossom in time, yet he remembers that 
old beliefs and opinions have passed away to give 
place to new ones, just as old tunes have. How is he 
to reconcile this philosophical creed with what seem 
to be facts of experience ? In stanza xiii. he attempts 
the reconciliation, which is to the effect that the un- 
derlying truth is permanent, but that the manifestations 
of the eternal verities whether in music or in beliefs 
are constantly enlarging so that the older ones grow out 
of date. Therefore he will rejoice ; Avison' s March 
may be old-fashioned in form, but the march motive 
will bear resetting. As a final little quip he imagines 
what Vv^ould be the effect of carrying a tune backwards 
instead of forwards, and concludes that by doing this 
unsuspected beauties would be revealed in Avison' s 
March. 

He seems to feel this attitude as somewhat disloyal, 
and ends by calling up a certain period of English 
history especially marked by a progressive impulse, and 
for which he is loath to think there was not music 



MUSIC AND MUSICIANS 177 

fitted for the occasion. He will do what he can now 
any way by celebrating it with a glorious " subject'* 
(theme for a fugue) of Bach's, and Avison shall help, 
and he writes a poem in honor of the heroes of that 
day — those who took the first steps toward that " Fed- 
erated England" he foresees in stanza xiv. Hne 388. 

Queries for Debate. — Do you remember to have 
read in any other poet poems upon m^usic which 
showed such intimate acquaintanceship with its tech- 
nical aspects ? Do you consider the use of these 
technical terms unfitted for poetry, or an example of 
the fact that the realms of poetry may so be enlarged 
by the poet who can use them poetically ? 

Is David in **Saul" allied with any of these 
musicians in his attitude toward music ? 

What is the attitude of the speaker in ** Fifine at 
the Fair"? Is Schumann's '* Carnival " used in 
this poem much as the ** Toccata " is used ? Should 
you say that the principal difference is that in the 
** Toccata " the picture suggested by the music is a real- 
istic, historical one, and the picture suggested by the 
"Carnival" music to the man in <* Fifine" grows 
from a realistic image of the Carnival at Venice to a 
philosophical vision of human society ? (For musical 
allusions and suggestions, see notes to Camberzvell 
Brozvni?ig on **Saul," Vol. IV., p. 375 ; on ** Fifine 
at the Fair," Vol. IX., p. 288. Also remarks on the 
musical poems in Introduction to these volumes.) 

II. Topic for Paper, Classwork, or Private Study. 
— The Philosophy of Music Indicated. 

Hi?2ts : — The question has often been discussed 

as to whether music is capable of giving any definite 

impression as to its meaning. In ** A Toccata " the 

music seems to give to the listener a very definite idea 

12 



178 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

of the life of Venice. Is it because there is anything 
in the music corresponding exactly to the mood of the 
life at that time, or is it rather the historical sense of 
the listener who calls up the picture ? He knows 
the life of the time when Galuppi lived, and when he 
hears the music, association of ideas causes him to see 
the picture. Is not the mood produced by the music, 
one of coldness and deadness, exactly the opposite of 
the brightness of Venetian life ? It cannot be said, 
then, that the ** Toccata " gives a definite picture of 
Venetian life, for it would have been powerless to 
produce it without the historic knowledge of Galuppi 
and his times possessed by the listener. 

On the other hand, Schumann's ** Carnival" 
mentioned in *< Fifine " deliberately attempts to put 
into music definite impressions. Much modern pro- 
gramme music does the same thing, as well as much of 
Wagner's music. To a certain extent it seems to be 
successful, though a large proportion of the success is 
due to the fact that cues to the meaning of the music 
are given either by deliberate descriptions, in acting, 
or in the titling of the music. The closer the at- 
tempt is toward the imitation of purely physical 
sounds, such as the neighing of horses, the singing of 
birds, etc., the more successful it is. It is to be ob- 
served, however, that the man in " Fifine " very 
soon leaves the concrete picture of Pantalon and 
Columbine, and through association, his historical 
sense, and his philosophizing predilecdons is led far 
afield by the music of Schumann. 

In ** Saul," again, the music of David has the 
desired effect upon Saul through association of ideas. 

Has the organist in ** Master Hugues " the same 
historical sense as the listener in *'A Toccata" ? 



MUSIC AND MUSICIANS 179 

Or does he try to draw a meaning directly from the 
fugue ? Does he in the end catch any intent of the 
composer, or does he merely attach a meaning to it 
from the outside, — a meaning, too, which is sug- 
gested entirely by the external form of the fugue, and 
not at all by its soul ? Would a composition like this 
fugue be necessarily possessed of any soul ? When 
contrapuntal writing was at its height, music was often 
so much a matter of rules and calculations that, instead 
of being the expression of the soul, it was merely an 
external and mechanical arrangement of sounds. 

Observe, then, that in these poems the hearer gets 
out of the music very much what he puts into it 
himself. If he have a vivid imagination backed up by 
sufficient knowledge, he can see historical pictures or 
visions of the whole of human society. If he be of 
a moralizing turn of mind, he can extract a moral 
where none was intended. The question is whether 
any of these attitudes toward music indicate a truly 
musical appreciation of music. 

Now let us see what Vogler feels about it. In 
*' Abt Vogler " we do not have the effect of music 
on the listener, but its effect on its creator. Notice 
that Vogler does not attempt to express a definite 
meaning through his music, nor to find one after- 
wards. The comparisons he uses are all with the 
external form of music. What he builds is a beautifial 
palace of sound ; the external manifestation of the 
wish of his soul to reach toward heaven. 

By means of the wondrous beauty of his creation, 
earth and heaven seem to touch, and he sees visions. 
Not that the music in itself gives definite pictures of 
visions, but that the soul is so exalted by the beauty 
of his music that it induces a mood for visions. The 



l8o BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

beauty and the evanescence of the music suggest two 
trains of philosophical thought : first, that any 
attainment which reaches out toward beauty and truth 
is a part of absolute beauty and truth, and is there- 
fore eternal ; second, that the failure to attain the 
perfect ideal of beauty and truth is in itself a proof that 
the perfect ideal will one day be realized; further, 
that all pain and evil is transitional, that its existence 
for a time is in order to add greater value to the 
joy which is to follow. 

The Abbe's passion of soul is transformed into 
beauty in musical form ; through that musical beauty 
would be reflected a mood of aspiration, but nothing 
more definite to one who could appreciate it in a true 
musical spirit. (For music as a suggester of moods, 
see ** The Boundaries of Music and Poetry," by 
Ambros. ) The trains of thought suggested are not 
such as would be deduced from any special musical 
composition, but grow from the analogies that may be 
drawn between the facts peculiar to musical extempori- 
zation and musical form and life; namely, evanescence, 
suggestive of the passing of all things ; beauty, which 
in its recognition gives a sense of the absolute ; con- 
trast between discords and concords, which suggests 
the contrast between good and evil ; and the harmony 
resulting from the admixture of discords with con- 
cords, suggesting that a completed view of life will 
show as great a harmony between good and evil. 
Notice once more that these thoughts of the Abbe 
are not the inspiration of the music, but follow as 
analogies after the music is finished. The sole in- 
spiration of the music is his mood of aspiration. 

When we come to ** Charles Avison," we find 
that the poet considers music to be the expression in 



MUSIC AND MUSICIANS i8i 

artistic form of the moods of the soul, of which Abt 
Vogler is the living example. There is no question 
of its expressing anything more definite and concrete; 
the problem with him being, Why, since it does 
express these most fundamental and abstract truths, 
should it lose its power, as time passes, for making 
a direct emotional appeal to the listener ? He is 
obliged to come to the conclusion that musical ex- 
pression is relative, like all human expression. It is 
ever trying fully to reveal the soul, but is hampered 
by man's finiteness, yet, owing to this very lack, prog- 
ress toward new forms is possible. " Autumxn comes. 
So much the better," which compares well with 
Abt Vogler's *' What is our failure here but a 
triumph's evidence of the fulness of the days r ' ' What 
hope is there for the music that is dead and gone ? 
It can only be made to speak again to us by the use 
of just such historical and imaginative methods as 
those used by the man in **A Toccata." 

It has been suggested by Mr. Moseley, in Proceed- 
ings of the London Browning Societv, that Browning, 
Wagner, and Schopenhauer's views are identical. He 
says : — 

'* Schopenhauer says it stands apart from all other 
arts in that it is not an imitation or reproduction of an 
Idea of the things in the world, but Speech of our 
deepest innermost self. Whilst the other arts objec- 
tivate the Will under mediation only, /. e. by means 
of Ideas, music is the immediate objectivation and image 
of the universal Will. It is by no means an image of 
the Ideas as the other arts are, but an Image of 
the Will itself: its effect so much more powerful 
and penetrating than that of other arts : for these 
speak of shadows only, whilst // speaks of essentials. 



l82 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

** Wagner says : * The essence of music is this, that 
which all other arts only indicate, through it and in 
it becomes unquestionable certainty, absolute and 
unequivocal truth' (v. 247). 

" Melody tells the hidden story of the will in the 
light of consciousness ; paints each emotion, each 
endeavor, each movement, all that reason gathers to- 
gether under the wide and negative conception of 
feeling, and which it can no longer grasp as abstrac- 
tions. Therefore also it has always been said that 
music is the speech of feeling and of passion, as 
language is of reason. The invention of melody, the 
exposition of all the deepest secrets of human desires 
and feelings, is the work of genius, whose work is 
here, more obviously than elsewhere, free from all 
reflection and conscious purpose, and may be called 
inspiration. The composer reveals the innermost 
essential being of the world, and expresses the pro- 
foundest wisdom in a language his reason does not 
understand ; as a magnetic somnambulist gives account 
of things of which she has no notion when awake. 

" What is the meaning of Abt Vogler, xii. ? Scho- 
penhauer will explain : — 

** ' The essential nature of man consists in this, that 
his Will strives, is satisfied and strives again, and so 
on for ever, nay that happiness and wellbeing consist 
of this only, that the transition from wish to satisfac- 
tion and from satisfaction to a new wish should go on 
rapidly, as the failing of satisfaction produces suffer- 
ing just as the absence of a new wish produces long- 
ing. Thus, in accordance with this, the essentials of 
melody consist in a continuous deviation, swerving 
from the key-note in a thousand ways, not only to 
the nearest harmonic notes, to the third or dominant. 



MUSIC AND MUSICIANS 183 

but to every tone, to the dissonant seventh, and to 
augmented intervals ; yet followed, in the end, by a 
Return to the starting-point : in all these ways melody 
expresses the manifold strivings of the Will ; whilst 
by the final return to some harmonic note, or more 
definitely, by a return to the key-note, its satisfaction 
is expressed.' " 

From what has preceded, should you say that the 
opinions of the three are identical, or that Brown- 
ing's includes and goes beyond all because he recog- 
nizes music's limitations ? Does the man in ** Fifine " 
differ from the poet in his musical philosophy except 
in the mode of his expression ? 

Queries for Discussion. — Do you think it true 
that all music reflects the moods of the soul ? Could 
it be said of merely imitative music ? 

Is there not also much music which seems to be 
put together from the outside rather than from the 
inside, and not necessarily poor music, but music with 
something of the artistic quality of arabesque patterns ? 

Does Browning anywhere state that all music is 
a reflection of soul-moods, or does he only contend 
that the power to do this is music's greatest 
achievement ? 

Does he not insist too strongly upon the ephemeral 
nature of musical expression ? Has not experience 
proved that whenever the high-water mark of musicaf 
expression has been reached,' it has survived in grea^ 
musical works of art ? (For example, Handel's Ora- 
torios, Beethoven's Symphonies.) 

Is Browning's philosophy of music further borne 
out by the fact that these poems may be regarded as 
types of various phases of musical development .? (See 
remarks on musical poems in Introduction to these 



184 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

volumes; also Naumann's '* History of Music" 
and Ritter's '* History of Music" for accounts of 
musical development.) 

III. Topic for Paper i Classwork, or Private Study. 
— Rhythm, Metre, and Ornament. 

Hints: — ** A Toccata" has eight stresses to the 
line, made up of seven trochaic feet with an extra 
stressed syllable at the end. The stanzas are of 
three lines, all rhyming together. Do you discover 
any variations from the normal line ? On the w^hole, 
the form is monotonous, is it not ? and well repro- 
duces the monotony of the old Toccata. But upon 
this monotonous rhythm are embroidered so many 
lively thoughts, that the effect is a combination 
of gayness with an undercurrent of dulness exactly 
suited to the subject of the poem. The musical 
allusions have already been considered in relation to 
the subject-matter. Are there any allusions intro- 
duced merely for ornament? How about other 
forms of poetical ornamentation, — similes, metaphors, 
symbols ? Are there many of them ? 

<* Master Hugues " shows a little more variety in 
the construction of the stanza, — two lines with three 
stresses, two with four, and a last one with three ; 
rhymes alternating, the last line rhyming with the first 
and third lines. The normal foot of the verse is a 
dactyl, but every line has an extra stressed syllable, 
and sometimes an extra unstressed one after the stressed 
one. 

Observe all these little variations, also the nature 
of the rhymes, the double ones often being very in- 
genious. These rhymes have been found fault with 
for their uncouthness, but when you examine them, 
do you not find that they are mostly easy and natural. 



MUSIC AND MUSICIANS 185 

and very well reflect the growing excitement of the 
organist as he gets deeper and deeper into the diffi- 
culties of the fugue ? The close of the struggle with 
the fugue is marked by what change in the form ? 
There are one or two elaborate comparisons in this 
poem ; what are they, and which has the most intrinsic 
poetic beauty ? Is the poem, on the whole, more 
figurative and more allusional in its language than the 
preceding poem ? 

It would be difficult to find a greater contrast in 
language than that between the two poems already 
spoken of and '* Abt Vogler." Point out the reasons 
for this contrast, noticing the far greater richness of 
the imagery, the wider and more exalted range of 
thought, the smooth and harmonious flow of the 
language, depending largely upon alliteration. The 
construction of stanza and line is simple, — six stresses, 
with one and sometimes two unstressed syllables fol- 
lowing, giving what Mr. Beatty calls iambic-logacedic 
metre ; then a final stressed syllable. 

There has been a good deal of talk as to the mean- 
ing of the line (52) ** That out of three sounds he 
frame not a fourth sound, but a star." See explanation 
suggested in the Notes to Camberzvell Brownrng^ Vol. 
v., p. 309. The whole phrase may be taken also as a 
symbol of the distinctive character of musical art as 
compared with other arts. Painting, for example, 
imitates the harmonies of color found in nature, but 
musical harmonies seem to be the result of human 
invention entirely, which first chooses out certain 
sounds and then chooses to combine them in stars of 
sound. This is still true artistically, although science 
has discovered that, with the exception of the minor 
third, the fundamental intervals used in music are 



l86 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

found combined in nature as partial vibrations (called 
overtones) of any vibrating body sounding a given 
note. The Abbe was, of course, not au^are of this 
modern scientific discovery. With regard to tlie 
musical allusions in this poem, are they used quite in 
the same way as they are in the others ? or do the 
different attitudes in the three poems necessarily 
result in a different use of the allusions ? 

The chief interest in the form in " Charles Avison " 
is in the variety of grouping in the rhymes. The 
metre is that of blank verse, iambic pentameter. 
Another thing to be noticed is the way in which the 
lines run on, line after line. How many end-stopped 
lines are there in this poem of 433 lines ? In spite 
of the fact that the sentences are mostly very long, 
the meaning is not difficult on that account, is it ? 
Which do you consider the most difficult passages, 
and why ? And which do you consider the most 
beautiful passages, and why ? Although this poem is 
so long and argumentative, do you not find the inter- 
est kept up all through by the changes in mood ? 
For example, first, the poet's observation of the black- 
cap ; second, his imagination rushing off at the thought 
of the march ; third, the prosaic description of the 
march ; fourth, the pondering over the problem ; fifth, 
philosophizing, first upon the soul, then upon the 
provinces of the arts ; sixth, an outbreak of humor, 
wherein he tries to reinstate Avison ; seventh, more 
philosophy, in which his optimistic theories struggle 
somewhat with the data of experience ; eighth, a tri- 
umphant mood ; ninth, another attempt to prove the 
worth of Avison' s March by showing how much it 
was ahead of Elizabethan plain-song ; and, finally, 
triumph once more. Loath to think England's heroes 



I 



MUSIC AND MUSICIANS 187 

of the past did not have good music, he will make it 
all right any way by cheering them now with music 
to his choice, and, loyal to Avison, will let him help. 
Perhaps it would not be stretching too much of a 
point to compare this poem to a musical composition 
w^ith several themes that recur at different intervals, 
one soaring and imaginative, one questioning and 
philosophical, one light and humorous, one trium- 
phant. Would it give the poem needed artistic unity 
to think of it in this way ? Is there any passage in the 
poem which would give direct credence to this idea ? 

Queries for Discussion. — What reasons can you 
think of which cause Browning always to dwell upon 
instrumental rather than vocal music? Is it another 
sign of his originality in the treatment of the subject ? 

Should you say that his musical poems prove that 
the poet was haunted by the fact of music's evanescent 
power ? 

Do you suppose this feeling of his was enhanced by 
the Wagner craze and the talk about the music of the 
future which has agitated the musical world for so 
many years? 

Is this talk dying out, and a recognition of the 
greatness of each musical age for its own special 
qualities taking its place ? 

The poet's evident wish that there should not be 
one lost good in music indicates that he would have 
hailed the sane attitude of the present, does it not ? 



The Poet 

Page 

Vol. Text Note 

The Poet in <* Pauline" i i 301 

"Memorabilia" ^ . iv 129 381 

"Popularity" iv 130 381 

"Transcendentalism" v i 281 

" How it Strikes a Contemporary " . . . . v 3 282 

" At the * Mermaid ' " ix 191 298 

"House" ix 197 298 

"Shop" ix 199 299 

"Touch him ne'er so lightly " x 226 323 

Last Lyric in " Ferishtah's Fancies " . . . . xii 61 318 

"Poetics" xii 201 363 

Album Lines xii 273 381 

"Goldoni" xii 274 381 

"The Names" xii 277 382 

Compare Aprile in "Paracelsus," part ii., vol i, 82, 309; 
" Sordello," ii. 93, 309 ; Ronsard and Marot in "The Glove," 
iv. 162, 185; passages in "The Ring and the Book," parts i. 
lines 410-470, 712-779, 1348-1365, xii. 835 foil.; "Two 
Poets of Croisic," lines 1210-1280, x. 235, 306; "Parleying 
with Christopher Smart," xii. loi, 330. ["Sordello" and 
" Smart " belong as wholes under this subject, but they are taken 
up later in "Single Poem Studies," which maybe combined at 
pleasure with this programme, or excluded from it on account of 
their length and subtlety.] On the poet considered as a writer of 
dramas, see "Aristophanes' Apology;" and on Browning with 
reference to himself as poet, see " Pacchiarotto " and Epilogue, 
and " Pambo," ix. 171, 294, and xi. 286, 337. 

Consult, also. Browning's Essay on Shelley given in Camberivell 
Bro-zunifigy vol. xii p. 383. 

I. Topic for Paper, Classwork, or Private Study. 
— The Poet-Nature. 



THE POET 189 

Hints: — The inner nature of a poet is Brown- 
ing's earliest subject-matter. It is evidence of his 
genuineness as a budding artist intending to model 
human life dramatically, that the theme he started out 
with, at twenty years of age, was one he really 
knew. 

The way in which he presented the poet nature in 
** Pauline" is shapeless, and the sequence of ex- 
periences and confidences is confused (for digest, see 
Camberwell Brozvni?ig, Notes, as cited above, and 
Introduction, pp. xxxix-xliv) ; but the characteristic 
traits of this poet's nature are clear : a central 
over-consciousness, capable, with development, not 
only of looking on at its own qualities and processes, 
but of disposing them at will ; and an insatiable thirst 
for knowledge and experience of all sorts. The 
main powers and habits of his mind are almost equally 
clear : a vitalizing imagination ; a trust in his own 
close relation to a higher power. The lack of de- 
velopment in the exercise of this central conscious- 
ness is evident in the planlessness of its expression. 
The way in which this insatiable thirst led to dis- 
sipation in sensation, and to action and thought having 
reference to self alone, so that a state of lovelessness 
and godlessness followed, is almost a necessary result 
of the natural play of a nature born with such charac- 
teristics. But its deliverance is almost equally a fore- 
gone conclusion ; and although the process of self- 
deliverance is indistinctly presented in the poem, the 
material from which it may be collected is supplied. 
The underlying confidence in the higher power of 
God — obscured by the enjoyment of personal desires 
which made self a centre, instead of God, or instead 
of any other object of love not subordinate to self — 



190 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

is finally restored by consciousness itself. The self, 
become conscious of weakness and mortality, is led to 
a sense of the comfort of Pauline's love, and thence 
to the old need of an infinite love. All the story this 
poem has consists in this restoration of the self to its 
primal need. The rest of ** Pauline " furnishes noth- 
ing else that throws light on the poet-nature, beyond 
lovely example after example of the gift of vivid, beauty- 
bestowing imagination, except for the light thrown upon 
one other similar reconciliation of a power of the poet- 
nature inconsistent in its exercise with that nature 
itself. This power is its craving f3r all knowledge, a 
craving inconsistent with the craving for appropriating 
to itself all passion. The necessity of accommodating 
these two to each other awakens his will to use the one 
for the sake of the other. But in choosing between 
giving the rein to reason or to love, he is again and 
often lost in difficulty, and so throughout ** Pauline" 
we have the oscillations of a nature beginning to be 
aware of itself and trying to put its elements into 
coherent relation, but with failure or half-success. 

In comparison with this self-centred, self-aggran- 
dizing poet-nature, the nature of Aprile, the poet of 
** Paracelsus," is strong in an equally innate desire for 
the out-flowing of self. But in the exercise of his 
desire to love infinitely and be loved, Aprile fails also. 
His intuitional insight and sympathy were so com- 
prehensive that the ready and serviceable means to 
express them were missed or spurned by a will as 
much too widely impassioned and reckless of control 
as that of the poet of «* Pauline " was too self- 
centred and adroit. The inborn tendency of the one 
poet-nature to appropriate to itself all beauty of 
knowledge and feeling is in Aprile a contrary ten- 



THE POET 191 

dency to dower all men with the beauty their own 
natures but dimly guess, and in so doing to gain his 
reward, their love or that of the Infinite Love. 

Browning followed up these two first sketches of sup- 
plementary poet-natures, by showing, in **Sordello,*' 
how still another variety of the poet-nature, starting 
out in life with as passionate a yearning as Aprile's to 
spend itself in outgoing desire, and as self-centred a 
motive in enjoying it as that of the poet of ** Paul- 
ine," is tutored, by contact with social life, and 
through accommodating, in the practical exercise of his 
art, his gifts and desires with the difficulties en- 
countered, to learn something, finally, of the mastery 
belonging to the centralized consciousness and self- 
control of the poet of " Pauline," and something of 
the social love belonging to Aprile's wide sympathy 
with humanity. 

In Sordello's case, however, it would seem that it 
was never a mere yearning of love for mankind, like 
Aprile's, although he came to feel that, which in- 
stigated him to poetic creation, but the gratification of 
an insuppressible v\/ill. In this respect his nature is 
more akin to that of the poet of ** Pauline," whose 
initial impulse found its basis in self. 

Eglamor, the minor poet of *' Sordello," was of 
still another type, of less exalted gifts than any of these 
his brother poets, being merely the lowly yet loyal 
slave of song, shaped by art, as it were, instead of 
aspiring to shape it. Although Aprilc may be 
linked with Eglamor in his desire to spend himself in 
outflow, he is distinguished from him by the dramatic 
bent of his genius. And though Eglamor may have 
attained a greater measure of success than either Aprile 
or the poet of ** Pauline," theirs were failures of a 



192 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

pioneer sort, their schemes being ahead of their 
accomplishment. They were both failures through 
complexity of power, while Eglamor, being merely a 
faithful imitative workman, had no such complexities 
of desires to satisfy. 

Browning's Essay on Shelley (see Camberwell 
Browning, Vol. XII., p. 383), after distinctly defin- 
ing the two great classes of poet-nature, ordinarily 
called objective and subjective, — the one as reproduc- 
ing things external, either scenic or human, with 
reference to men ; the other as embodying his own 
perceptions, ** not so much with reference to the 
many below as the One above " — calls attention to 
the fact that there is " not so much essential dis- 
tinction in the faculty of the two poets, ... as in the 
. . . adaptability *' of the objects used by either to the 
''distinct purpose of each." The poet whose study 
is himself with reference to the absolute intelligence 
and whose usual material is Idea and Nature, and the 
poet whose study is the doings of men and whose 
usual material is human action and effect, may inter- 
change material and keep their disdnct purpose and 
mode of working. Moreover, the two modes of 
working might be followed successively by the same 
poet in perfection ; or there might be " a mere run- 
ning in of the one faculty upon the other . . . the 
ordinary circumstance." 

Has Browning shown in the poet of ** PauHne " a 
poet with mixed gifts, — his self-centred consciousness 
being a gift adapting him to the work of the dramatic 
poet, who is able to externalize his material so that it 
may appeal to the aggregate understanding of men ; 
his yearning towards a God rather than towards 
human love being a gift of spiritual perception adapt- 



THE POET 



193 



ing him to the work of the subjective poet, whose 
attempt is the embodiment of absolute truth, *< not 
what man sees, but what God sees"? May such 
a confusion of gifts, although differently commingled, 
which he also was not strong enough to master, have 
been meant to characterize Aprile ? Both would 
then represent types of the poet-nature sketched as in 
the process of evolution ; while in Sordello a full- 
length portrait of a poet-nature, dowered distinctively 
with the will to create, seems to be presented as 
having the capability to pass through successive stages 
of development, both as to faculty and purpose. 

The references to Shelley in ** Pauline*' forbid 
the supposition that Shelley is portrayed in the poet 
of " Pauline." What sort of poet-nature is presented, 
and can you find any actual poet whom the descrip- 
tion fits ? If there is a likeness to Shelley which comes 
out in the evidently strong influence of Shelley upon 
him, in what does it consist.? Notice the essential 
difference, — his distinctive self-consciousness which 
Shelley as distinctively lacked ? Would Keats or the 
young Browning (not the ripe Browning) suit the 
character ? Say why ? 

For suggestions as to signs of Browning's sympathy 
with Shelley, see Florence Converse's "Shelley's 
Influence on Browning" (^Poet-iore, Vol. VII., pp. 
*i8-2 8, January, 1895). 

The poet-nature is not directly treated in '' Mem- 
orabilia." It comes out, in that bit of homage to 
Shelley, only in the guise of the sense of inner event- 
fulness the poet-nature has the power to stir so deeply. 

In " Popularity," also, Keats is not directly praised, 
but is made an instance of the originality peculiar to the 
rare and distinctive poet-nature which gives its work 
13 



194- BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

so new and fresh a quality. So primitive and close to 
nature is it, that it is at first misunderstood and 
despised, and afterwards slavishly imitated, not merely 
by gentle and kindly Eglamors, but by grossly com- 
mercial Nokeses and Stokeses, who reap the reward 
Keats died without. 

The poet who poetizes general truths bare of illu- 
sion is the subject of *' Transcendentalism." His 
way of separating principles from their embodiment is 
compared with the metaphysical way of looking at 
life, by a brother-poet whose claim for any poet is 
that he ought to be like the magician, charming men 
with convincing apparitions of life ; instead of like the 
theologian, drawing abstractions from it. True in 
practice to his theory of the poet, this brother-poet 
sees a poem in the poet whose theory he criticises. 
And this poem is made, by Browning himself, in 
accordance with the same principle of poetic art. In 
place of launching out upon abstract principles, he 
.presents a picture of two poets conferring together, 
thus embodying vividly two diiFerent views of poetic 
art. 

But how do you think this poem should be under- 
stood ? Is it ** a genuine piece of criticism," as Mrs. 
Orr declares ; or is it intended by Browning as an 
answer to his critics, as Dr. Berdoe thinks probable, 
who says : ** It has been said of Mr. Browning's poetry 
by a hundred competent writers that he does not sing, 
but philosophizes instead ; that he gives the world his 
naked thoughts, his analyses of souls not draped in the 
beauty of the poet's art, but in the form of * stark- 
naked thought.' There is no objection, says his 
interviewer, if he will but cast aside the harp which 
he does not play but only tunes and adjusts, and 



THE POET 195 

speak his prose to Europe through * the six-foot Swiss 
tube which helps the hunter's voice from Alp to Alp.' 
The fault is, that he utters thoughts to men thinking 
they care little for form or melody, as boys do. It 
is quite otherwise he should interpret nature — 
which is full of mystery — to the soul of man: as 
Jacob Boehme heard the plants speak, and told men 
what they said ; or as John of Halberstadt, the magi- 
cian, who by his will-power could create the flowers 
Boehme thought about. The true poet is a poem 
himself, whatever be his utterance." 

Is it a critic — an interviewer, as Dr. Berdoe ex- 
plains, or a *' brother-poet," as Browning says — who 
speaks in this poem .? Is there a discrimination m.ade 
between the way he should interpret Nature and 
Thought ? And is no discrimination made between 
Jacob Boehme' s and John of Halberstadt' s methods as 
symbols of different poetic methods ? Why, then, 
are these methods introduced and contrasted ? Are 
both considered equally good, in the poem, as poetic 
methods? And is the gist of ** Transcendentalism," 
therefore, that the manner of the utterance is unim- 
portant, because ** the true poet is a poem whatever 
be his utterance ? " Or is it not rather that the manner 
of utterance is important ; and that although the author 
writing out his bare thoughts may himself be a poem, 
the poem he writes is ** naught" ? 

Should the poem be interpreted symbolically, as 
suggested in Camberwell Brozc?ungy Vol. V., p. 281, 
or taken literally, as Browning's apology to his 
critics ? If the latter, what does the apology amount 
to as a defence ? 

The speaker of ** How it Strikes a Contemporary " 
is an idler of the poet's own town and time, whose 



196 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

conception of the poet-nature is colored by his point 
of view. He misunderstands it, and falls far short 
of appreciating its value, and yet he has a lurking sus- 
picion of this man's mysterious importance, though 
naturally he construes this to be importance to the 
King, as a spy, instead of importance to a higher 
power whence the poetic gift that marks him from 
other men is derived. His townsman is himself finally 
led to suggest this, as if he saw through his own com- 
parison, at the end of the poem, in his talk about the 
poet's death. How far can the account given of the 
poet's life and habits by the townsman be trusted? 
Is his observation of facts, for instance, as to what 
the poet looked at in the street, etc., to be depended 
upon, but his interpretation of them to be taken with 
a grain of salt? How much allowance must be 
made for Browning's humorous treatment of the 
theme? What sort of nature does his contemporary's 
account of him lead you to suppose the poet had ? 
To what class of poet-nature did he belong ? Was he 
a poet of nature, a subjective poet, or a dramatist ? 
Why must he have been whatever you think the 
poem authorizes you to conclude, and not a poet of 
either of the other two sorts ? 

'*At the 'Mermaid,' " ** House," and ** Shop" are 
a group of poems in which Browning had the poet- 
nature of Shakespeare more or less directly in mind. 
They appear to have been called out by opposition to 
the theories of Shakespeare's personality uppermost 
at about the time they were written, but which are 
now, a decade after Browning's death, undergoing 
considerable modification in general consonance with 
Browning's view. (See particularly Sidney Lee's 
** Shakespeare," as opposed to Tyler's '* Sonnets of 



THE POET 197 

Shakespeare." For digests of the poems, see Camber- 
well Brownings Vol. IX., p. 298.) These theories 
might be briefly stated thus : ( i ) that Shakespeare's life 
may be discovered in his work, and that cynicism toward 
life and especially toward women are revealed in it ; (2) 
that the Sonnets are autobiographical in detailed and 
literal ways; (3) that money was his main object in 
writing, and his care for becoming a gentleman of 
landed estate with tithes to collect and law-suits on 
hand, the sufficient explanation of his career. The 
three poems successively take up some phase of 
these three suppositions. 

In ** At the * Mermaid ' " a scene is presented in 
which Shakespeare is speaking in the midst of a circle 
of his sherris-drinking contemporaries, frequenters of 
the ** Mermaid " tavern. He refers to the partisan 
quarrels and rival ambitions seething about him in 
which he is vainly tempted to take an active part ; 
claiming for himself excuse both from the honors and 
the entanglements in which they would involve him. 
Browning makes him refer especially to the post of 
chief poet and the price that has to be paid for it, — 
homage to grandees and squabbles with rivals, — in 
contrast with the life full of zest he lives aloof from 
cynicism either as to Love, Fortune, or Fame. 

** House " is less directly applicable to Shakespeare ; 
but, beneath the symbol used of a house open to a 
gaping public, and his own refusal to make his privacy 
open to any but the spirit-sense in sonnet-singing, the 
reference to investigations of Shakespeare's Sonnets 
for particulars of his private life is obvious. The 
tenth stanza emphasizes this. The exclamation 
" Hoity toity," etc., and the reminder that Shake- 
speare did what the speaker refuses to do, is put, dra- 



198 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

matically, in the mouths of such investigators. On 
the rejoinder, which questions it, — as much as to 
say, I, for one, do not accept this statement of yours, 
— declaring, on the contrary, that it is inconsistent 
with Shakespeare's character, is based a divination of 
what that poet's nature really was; that is, so 
supremely dramatic in his plays that he himself must 
have had the soul corresponding to the dramatic 
bent. 

** Shop " makes no reference to Shakespeare, but 
is a supplementary poem to ** House," bringing up 
a companion symbol of a shop in which the whole 
life of the shop-keeper is swallowed up. It is a vivid 
way of showing by an analogy what the theory of a 
man like Shakespeare, having no glimpse beyond 
material success in his work, would make him out to 
be. Browning's own way of dealing with the fact 
that Shakespeare worked to meet the theatrical mar- 
ket, etc., may be inferred from the closing stanzas 
carrying on the parable (Hnes 90-110). Because 
we know nothing certainly of any inner life after his 
retirement, which took place while not yet an old man, 
it does not in the least follow that there was none. 
Not external facts that there was any such life prove 
it, but the poet-nature of the man does. *' Ask him- 
self!" (See line 91.) It is inconsistent with his 
poet-nature to suppose " all his music" to be ** money 
chink." Because he had to look out for material suc- 
cess, and did so, does it therefore follow that there 
were no thoughts, fancies, loves, ** except what trade 
can give" ? (See stanza xx.) Again, in the last two 
stanzas, under the veil of the symbol of shop-keeping. 
Browning, for one, declares this theory of Shakespeare 
most unHkely and unnatural, and he asserts, on the 



THE POET 



99 



contrary, his protest against such absorption of the 
soul in the means of living that there was no life, 
beside, in so strong a way that the opposite idea is 
intimated. (For further hints on Browning's im- 
plications concerning Shakespeare in these poems, see 
** Browning's Tribute to Shakespeare," Poet-lore ^ 
Vol. III., pp. 216-221, April, 1 89 1.) 

How does ** The Names " compare with these 
poems in presenting a view of Shakespeare's nature? 
(See Camberwell Browiiing, Vol. XII., Notes, for 
explanation of the figure used as to names.) What 
do you think of the sonnet as praise ? Could it be 
higher ? Is it characteristic of Browning, that his 
Sonnet in honor of Shakespeare does not draw out of 
him so graphic a picture of the great dramatist's nature 
as these symbolic poems ? 

Browning explained in his Album Lines (^Camber- 
well Brozvnifigy Vol. XII., p. 273) that he was think- 
ing of Dante when he wrote *' Touch him ne'er so 
lightly," and of other such great national poets. How 
does the poem suit this explanation 1 Notice that the 
first stanza is a speech from the mouth of some critic 
whose attitude Browning represents as assuming to be 
all-sufficient upon his subject. That subject is the 
poet-soul, which he expounds to be an easy-singing 
nature, blooming without inward struggle, like a flower. 
This view the poet, apparently, as interlocutor, com- 
bats skeptically in the second stanza, in much the same 
manner as he questioned the view of Shakespeare's 
soul held by some critics as if it w^ere perfectly known 
and understood. This he does merely by his doubt- 
ing ** Indeed V as if his recollection glanced at once 
to historic examples of a contrary fact, where hard 
conditions and all kinds of weather, good and bad. 



200 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

slowly bred not so much jthe flowers of poetry and 
easy recognition, but the tenacious tree, quietly grow- 
ing, which proves to be the heritage of more than one 
generation. Observe the indirect implication that the 
critic's description does indeed apply to the lesser 
though not to the greater poet-nature. How true is 
the picture drawn in the second stanza to Dante ? 
Compare the lines to Dante in '^ Sordello," Book I., 
lin.-s 348-372. 

In his Sonnet on Goldoni one of these slighter poet- 
natures is praised. How is this done ? Is any 
incapacity shown to appreciate the Venetian come- 
dian's lighter form of genius, because of his emphasis in 
the Epilogue on the enduring importance to the world 
of a weightier kind of poet, like Dante ? 

What conclusions may be drawn from the fact that 
many of Browning's portraits of poets have reference 
to actual historic poets ? How many are imaginative ? 
And how many are partly historical or typical ? 

Queries for Discussion. — Is there reason to suppose 
that Cervantes stood for the portrait of the poet- 
nature drawn in ** How it Strikes a Contemporary " ? 
or is it better to suppose it stands for any typically 
dramatic poet ? 

Is Browning's conception of Shakespeare in " At 
the ' Mermaid ' " a proof of his correct insight r Is 
his opposition in '* House" to the autobiographical 
theory of Shakespeare's Sonnets jusdfiable ? 

Do Browning's portrayals of the poet reveal his 
predilection for originality in poetry, as opposed to 
imitative and technical excellence, and for the dramatic 
or vividly objective modes of poetical work, instead 
of the pictorial or didactic and generalizing ? If so, 
does this revelation of his sympathies show that his 



THE POET 201 

own poetry did, in his judgment, belong to this objec- 
tive class of work ; or that he had no knowledge of 
himself? 

How does Browning's treatment of the poet in 
these poems compare with that of his contemporaries, 
— Tennyson's, for example, in ** The Poet," ** The 
Poet's Mind," ''Lucretius," ''To Victor Hugo," 
"To Dante," "To Virgil," " The Dead Prophet " ? 

II. Topic for- Papery Classzuorky or Discussion. — 
The Poet and the World. 

Hints : — In which of the poems cited in this series 
is the poet's relation with the world brought out? 

In "Pauline," the beautiful imagery (lines 151- 
205) which is employed to picture what Shelley was 
to the young poet and what he finds him to be to the 
world, at first neglectful of him, is almost the only 
flattering reference to the general public the young 
poet's confidences to " Pauline" afford. "World's 
influence" upon himself (see lines 349-354) was 
deemed so deteriorating that only loneliness could 
cure him after it. Shelley, and a world of choice 
spirits, select, and known to him in books, are really, 
except for Pauline, his links of sympathy with the 
outside world ; but these he does not account as 
"real life," and although the enthusiasm for that 
which he has received from Shelley, and the plan to 
help men which he has derived from Plato, deter- 
mine his " plan to look on real life, the life all new " 
to him (lines 441—464), he is not only disappointed 
and disillusionized with the world when he does try 
to know something of it, but content to have it so, 
since his own powers are strengthened by the experi- 
ence. Even the influence of the select souls of poets 
over men begins to seem vain ; and his only comfort is 



202 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

in his own homage to them (529—569 and 690—697), 
and to England, clang to somewhat desperately and 
almost as a conventional form or mere menial habit. 
Pauline's suggestion that **a perfect bard was one 
who chronicled the stages of all life" (883) em- 
bodies the most luminous conception of the world as 
related to the poet which the poem contains, and the 
most hopeful to the young poet, for it helps him out 
of his maze and urges him to tell at least his own 
story as an example of one stage of life, which may, 
indeed, as he divines (i 009-1 021), open up to him 
the beauty and validity of other stages of life. 

Aprile's first word, on the other hand, is of the 
God-given office of the poet to the world, and his 
beautiful song in ** Paracelsus," Book il., lines 281 — 
339, is an anguished lament over the unexerted powers 
of dead poets who left the world they were to loosen, 
bound. Nor has he an altogether vague conception 
of what the poet may do to fullil his office in saying 
better than he for the "lowest hind" "his own 
heart's language." 

But in ** Sordello " the poet who created Aprile 
has taken a long step onward in social experience 
when he sets out to show not merely the value of the 
poet to the world, but of the world to the poet. (See 
the brief general digest of ** Sordello," Camberiuell 
Brozvnifigy Vol. II., pp. 309 and 310; also the In- 
troduction, pp. vii-x.) 

How do " Memorabilia " and *' Popularity " 
illustrate the poet's relation with the world? Are 
they indicative, like ** Sordelb," of a treatment of the 
poet by Browning from a more sophisticated point of 
view, because they place in contrast the sympathetic 
and the unsympathetic relation of a poet with the pub- 



THE POET 203 

lie? This comes out in '* IMemorabilia," through the 
speaker's keen sense of the unusual and significant in 
merely once seeing and speaking with Shelley, and 
through the indifference of the person who did see him 
and speak to him. How does this little poem in its 
first two stanzas alone and through the mouth of but 
one speaker manage to give you such an impression of 
the poet in his relation to these two persons ? Are 
the seventh and eighth hnes the most tell-tale in giv- 
ing the two points of view ? Notice in what daz- 
zlingly high relief the inner eventfulness of Shelley to 
the speaker is put by the simile of the moors and the 
feather in the other two stanzas. 

In ** Popularity " the contrast between public 
sympathy and indifference to spiritual originality in a 
poet is drawn by presenting the effect of his new 
quality on the one man who when he saw him knew 
him and named him a star, man's **star, God's glow- 
worm " (lines 4-6), and who, foreseeing the increas- 
ing homage his poetry w'ill win in the future, attempts 
to draw him as he stands, in the present, with few or 
none noticing him or marvelling over the spoils his 
skill has brought to land out of the great deep (lines 
21-25). Then this contrast between public sym- 
pathy and indiff^erence is made still stronger by bring- 
ing into the picture a third and a fourth class of public 
opinion : the third is represented by the bystander who 
could criticise and quote tradition on classic examples 
of just the sort of artistic result this poet has rediscov- 
ered the native material for (lines 31—40) ; and the 
fourth is represented by the train of imitators who 
catch up some dilution of this rediscovered poetic 
material, and thrive on the use of that for which the 
poet received no such reward. Tkese two classes of 



204 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

the public show not indifference, but stupidity in their 
relation to the poet and his work. They lack the 
alertness of understanding to appreciate the poet 
promptly, but neither the knowledge that might have 
helped them to be wiser, nor the ready talent and 
merely technical dexterity that enable them to get 
some good for themselves out of the master-poet's 
original toil. Observe, too, that a special touch is 
given each one of the train of imitators, who show 
both their nature and the momentum of Keats' s fame 
in the fact that Hobbs only ^* hints " blue very con- 
servatively, while Nobbs * Sprints" it venturously, and 
Nokes and Stokes compete with each other in rashly 
*' azure feats." 

The relation of the poet to the world illustrated in 
** Transcendentalism " amounts to the assertion of a 
general poetic principle. If the poem is to be taken 
as genuine in its critical import, it implies that imagery 
or symbolism, the '* 'draping of naked thoughts in 
sights and sounds," is the essential difference between 
poetry and prose; and that this is what the developed 
mind, that is, the reader whose intellectual and esthetic 
sensibility is really cultured and mature, desires above 
all else in poetry. Notice that the supposition that 
boys seek for images and melody, and men for reason, 
in poetry is put in the mouth of the boy-poet ; and that 
a deepening of the import of his argument is the turn 
the other poet gives this in his rejoinder. It is 
** quite otherwise," says he. In youth objects do not 
strike us as wonderful, we take them for granted, and 
only concern ourselves about their hidden meaning ; 
but when we know more of life, we prize life itself and 
hail every evidence of its power and beauty. Is this 
not true of mankind in general as well as of individuals; 



THE POET 205 

the early concern of races, in their infancy, being to 
attach supernatural doctrines and unreal origins to nat- 
ural objects, which later in intellectual development 
the mind of man has been content to observe and 
investigate for their own sake, recognizing in these 
objects themselves their native vitality and beauty ? 
This suggests, perhaps, not only that science is a later 
growth than theology, but also that realism in the 
sense of interest in real life is a later product in liter- 
ature — including poetry — than romanticism in the 
sense of unreal or impossible life. If the poet's 
strongest and closest relation with his public consists, 
then, in his presentation of life to that public, does it 
not also reveal the supplementary general poetic prin- 
ciple that the poet must depend upon objective life to 
convey to his public thoughts and reason ? In other 
words, does it follow, because poetry must make use 
of objects, that it shall not transcend the objective and 
give forth spiritual truths by means of them.? Or what 
is the trend of '* Transcendentalism " ? Does the in- 
terrupting poet object to the boy poet because he 
thinks he ought not to introduce thoughts or reason in 
poetry, or only because his method of introducing 
them is not an effective and wise one, is not an 
artistic method ? 

Neither the sophisticated man who is amused at 
another's starting when he hears this favored one has 
actually met Shelley, as in *' Memorabilia ; " nor the 
appreciative man in ** Popularity," who recognizes a 
Keats as soon as he sees him; nor dull scholars who 
know all about the classics but never could get any 
inspiration out of Lempriere's Dictionary or their 
own sense of beauty, as Keats did ; nor yet clever 
minor poets who took their cue from the new poet ; 



2o6 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

nor the brother-poet who cautions an ardent boy in 
his poetic attempts, as in " Transcendentalism ; '* but 
quite a different sort of member of the general public 
is presented with relation to a poet in ** How it 
Strikes a Contemporary." How would you describe 
him from the clews the poemf gives ? Would you take 
him to be familiar with any book at all ? It seems 
to be more than he would do to glance **with half 
an eye" at the books on the stall in the street, 
the fly-leaf ballads, or the ** broad-edge bold-print 
posters on the wall," the notice of which by the 
poet he is talking about is among his proofs of the 
cognizance the strange fellow took **of men and 
things." And what conclusions do you draw of him 
from the other ways in which he, who could never 
write a verse, describes the only poet he ever knew in 
his life ? How does he describe this poet's clothes, 
and notice what he lets fall about his own ; his breath- 
ing himself on the promenade at the unfashionable 
hour, his " bloodlessness," and the fact that he found 
"no truth in one report," since the ** poor man" 
lived "quite another kind of life," etc. .? Does this 
young Spanish dandy describe himself more unmistak- 
ably than he describes the post.'' Is he not an example 
of the vague and mysterious effect a poet of widespread 
fame might have on a gay and credulous unlettered 
young man about town } 

In the Shakespearian group of poems the poet 
exposes the envy and ready suspicions of evil born 
of a facility in persons generally for judging the most 
different personility by themselves, which makes 
them love to blur a shining mark, unable to under- 
stand its distinction and grudging to yield it the 
advantage of its own nature over theirs. 



THE POET 207 

** At the * Mermaid,' " in particular, brings out more 
directly than the preceding poems the inner portrait 
of the central figure, the poet himself, — Shakespeare. 
As Browning conceives him, what sort of a man is he 
in his relation with the world ? Notice the light 
opinion he has of the insight of the good fellows 
about him (lines 9-12). He is not likely to open 
his heart expansively to the roomful (see stanza v.). 
He is alive to the weaknesses of humanity, and keenly 
aware of the unlovely itch it has to find that the 
bard is weak and human too (as if that were at all 
strange!), and he declares, therefore, that just because 
he knows he is mortal, he will not enjoy such grovel- 
ling, but, shutting the door to that sort of thing, 
cleave for himself to the uplift of his work, leaving 
them their choice in what concerns themselves, not 
him (lines 41-56 and 69-72). But though he 
seems not to claim that weaknesses do not belong to 
him, their fellow-man, he does maintain that revel- 
ling in the fact of weakness and meanness and the 
imperfections of life is not his foible; his outlook is 
rosy, not grim ; scorning neither high nor low, finding 
himself akin to opposite natures, he does not scout 
mankind ; and, as for womankind, blesses his good 
fortune, which, if not theirs, may be, he insinuates, 
because their treatment of her called out the response 
they blame (lines 73-120). This being his relation 
with the public about him, the relation of his work 
and himself to fame, which starts him in his mono- 
logue (stanza i.), is that of one who lays no claim to 
special honor in his own day ; and as to the future 
he does not anticipate, but awaits judgment (stanzas 
xvi. and xviii.). What is the meaning of the 
seventeenth stanza in showing the relation of Shake- 



2o8 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

speare's work and personality to the world ? Does 
it intimate that the outpourings of a poet's weakness 
do not assimilate with the life of other men except 
in an external way, and that instead of reaching the 
heart of the world they pass away without per- 
manently affecting it ? Is this peculiarly true of 
Shakespeare's weaknesses, whatever they may have 
been ? 

That what makes the poet's inner life distinctively 
his own must necessarily be deeper than externalities, 
is the gist of '* House." That rich evidence of 
genius in a poet's work must have been based on 
more of individual life than can meet the world's eye, 
is the implication of " Shop." 

Does the contention of "Touch him ne'er so 
lightly," that the world-poet's growth is not an 
easy process, accord with the view of Shakespeare 
presented ? 

Verse-making is compared with love-making in re- 
lation to the poet, in the lyric following ** Cherries " 
in "Ferishtah's Fancies," in order to show how it is 
a process of infinite capabilities, not merely in what 
has been done, but in all that might be, so that the 
most one can do in it is little enough ; while love- 
making, although also of infinite significance, is so 
condensed in each experience of love that the least 
each one can feel is enough. Verse-making as an 
occupation in its relation to the world, the subject 
of the, last lyric, asserts that the poet may justly 
regard the fame that brings love as irrelevant to his 
artistic aims. If he poured his whole life recklessly 
into his work for the sake of what it would bring 
him, taking no joy in life himself, then he might com- 
plain with reason if love were lacking. But reward 



THE POET 



209 



and aim of another sort inciting him, and his life for its 
own sake being good, praise or just judgment will be 
welcome, but love must not affect his design. 

Do you think this an ungracious expression of the 
relation between the poet and the world, or does the 
self-poise expected on either side, of the poet and his 
appreciators, appeal to you as a fine element afford- 
ing a better co-relation, — one tending to awaken a 
more genuine regard on both sides ? 

Metaphors drawn from nature, the accepted mode 
of using imagery in love lyrics, are found to be an in- 
sufficient kind of art in " Poetics," compared with 
similes drawm from human appearance. Does this 
evolved kind of poetics suggest that the relation of 
mankind to the poet is fundamental, affecting even 
his technique^ — the stuff out of which he must 
weave his choicest comparisons being human nature 
itself? 

Queries for Discussion. — Is Browning's way of 
treating of the poet in relation to his public, so as 
to present a variety of the personalities composing 
that public, a common trait of poems on the poet ? 
Compare and discuss, for example, with the poems 
on poets by Tennyson before cited. 

Does Browning's philosophy of poetic art, as re- 
vealed in these poems, rank him with the critics 
who hold to the theory of art for art's sake or with 
those who believe in art for life's sake ? 

Does the drift of the " Parleying with Christopher 
Smart" summed up in the closing verses, **Live 
and learn, not first learn and then live, is our con- 
cern," apply especially to poetic art, and is it con- 
sistent with the general poetic principle illustrated in 
" Transcendentalism " "f 

14 



2IO BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Would it be a sound criticism to judge of a poet's 
genius, as Browning suggests in **The Two Poets of 
Croisic," to ask if he led "a happy life" ? 

Should the true poet sing to the masses, not to the 
few, as Naddo says in " Sordello ;" and if Browning 
does not agree with him, is he wrong? (See ** Sor- 
dello," Book III., lines 784-815.) 

What should be the poet's attitude toward his 
critics? And what should be the critic's attitude 
toward the poet ? 

in. Topic for Paper, Class-work, or Private 
Study. — Browning's Poetics in the Poet-Poems. 

Hints: — When you look inquiringly at '* Paul- 
ine " to discover the artistic reason why its imagery 
and poetic atmosphere differ so markedly from the 
rest of Browning's work in which the poet is the 
subject, the redundancy of its similes is perhaps the 
most noticeable difference you can put your finger on. 
For example, when the young poet realizes that the 
cynicism as to mankind and life, which seemed at 
first to leave him freer and stronger than ever, isolat- 
ing him from any outward aim or devotion, was the 
defect of his special quahty of a distinct self-conscious- 
ness, or over-consciousness, and was weakening actu- 
ally, instead of strengthening, the powers he so 
delighted in, he expresses this in a series of original 
and striking images, so that they get in one another's 
way, and he embroiders these images with such 
picturesque details that the details block the road of 
the image itself. So, in Hnes 90-123, he likens this 
course astray of his soul to the circuit of a celestial 
body, once free to revolve at large, but now confined 
to a subordinate path about an inferior orb. Then the 
sense that this is a direct result of his own nature is 



THE POET 21 I 

vividly put as a feeling visiting him in dreams that 
he himself is the fate he flees from ; and then, suc- 
cessively, two images of this same situation of self- 
disenchantment, each more elaborate than the other, 
picture it again, — the first that of the swan, like a 
moonbeam, kept with him, in the ocean-cave where 
he is, till it loses its beauty ; then, second, that of a 
radiant god growing less radiant on earth while he 
sings of heaven to a young witch who lured him 
from his home. Notice all the details that are added 
to these similes. 

Again, in lines 172-200, what succession of figures 
illustrates that which has been already said figuratively 
(156—160), about his half-pleasure, half-disappoint- 
ment, in finding that Shelley's genius was the world's 
and not alone his own delight ? What other such 
similes are there ? Are the figures in ** Pauline *' 
mostly drawn from celestial and natural objects .'' 
And when human analogies are used, how are they 
qualified by a strange or semi-human aspect ? Notice 
lines 451-456, 956 and 957, 1027, etc. Which 
allusions and figures are drawm from classic legends ? 
(For explanation of these, see Camberzuell Brownings 
Vol. I., p. 301.) Do these similes suit the poet of 
'* Pauline " especially \ Although they fit the char- 
acter and are an integral part of his confessions, do 
you feel sure that they w^ere due to design, or that 
they were in part, at any rate, natural to the young 
Browning ? 

** Memorabilia " and '* Popularity " are in strong 
contrast, in their comparatively simple imagery, with 
the richness of ** Pauline." Do they give you the 
impression of employing a single image more continu- 
ously, in all its ins and outs, to fit the idea intended 



212 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

to be brought out, and of selection of the one, unem- 
barrassed with others that might throng to mind as the 
most forcible for the embodiment of the idea ? Notice 
what these images are. In ** Memorabilia " the 
metaphor is the moulted eagle feather picked up on 
the moors. The feather is an event. The moors, 
miles of them, are blank except for this. This meta- 
phor of double comparison given in the two closing 
stanzas is co-extensive with the idea the poem conveys. 
In it, in fact, the poem consists, for the two preceding 
stanzas bat lead up to this, themselves containing but 
the bare account of the meeting with the man who 
had once met Shelley. After the picking up of the 
feather is described and we hear how it is put inside 
the speaker's breast, and that he forgets ** the rest," 
there is no explanation, — no application of the simile 
to the particular instance of the meeting with Shelley. 
Is any needed? Is this a peculiarly vivid and strong 
way of using imagery ; or do you think it obscure } 

In ** Popularity " the main image used is that of the 
fisher who has brought to land a netful of the shells 
which secreted the famous Tyrian dye. This sym- 
bol for the post whose originality of genius has 
brought the world an infinitely expansible product 
that can lend beauty and value everywhere, is unfolded 
in new relations with the idea throughout nine of the 
thirteen stanzas. Notice that no direct reference is 
made to the subject of the comparison till the last 
words are reached ; and yet how the significance 
grows, and how the reader's intelligence is made 
ready to catch the full force of the allusion to Keats 
when it does come. Notice, especially, the beauty 
of the picture of the whelks with the charm of the 
sea-wet still on them, in the eighth stanza ; and of 



THE POET 213 

the contrast of that picture with the splendor of the 
gold-robed king amid his Tyrian-blue hangings, in 
the next stanza ; and of that again with the picture 
in the tenth stanza of the gold and blue flower whose 
beauty the bee is drunken with. Do you think the 
grotesque quality of the Tyrian dye imagery in the 
final stanzas, by contrast with the beauty of that of 
the earlier stanzas, is too rough ? Or is the rudeness 
of the application to Hobbs et al. suitably indicative 
of the disdain the Keats enthusiast who is speaking 
feels for the thrifty copyists, and therefore as much 
in keeping with the plan of the poem as the magical 
sea-touch is in the working up of the image as to the 
originality of Keats in the eighth stanza ? Point out 
the meaning of the metaphors employed in the second 
and third stanzas. The poet whose light is a star to 
the one who knew his worth from the first, is con- 
ceived of as to God a glow-worm ; and God is 
imagined as holding him guardingly in his hand, as 
one might hold a glow-worm out in his hand, keeping 
it safe there and letting out its light at need to show 
the way in the dark world. There is a contrast 
drawn also between the originality of the poet who 
holds the future through the present (lineS 13-1 5), and 
the imitativeness of the writers who paint the future 
from the past (hne 59) instead of from the present, 
as Keats did. 

Both ** Popularity " and "Memorabilia" are writ- 
ten in iambic, four-stressed verse arranged in short 
and simple stanzas, alternately rhymed. What differ- 
ences are there in the stanza form in the tw^o poems ? 
Do double rhymes occur ? In which is the stress 
changed the oftener so as to fall upon the first syllable 
of the foot ? Where do you put the stress in line 



214 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

II of ** Memorabilia," and lines i8, 20, and 55 of 
''Popularity " ? 

«< Transcendentalism," which is written in blank 
verse like ** Pauline," having the same number of 
stresses to the line and being without rhyme, has quite 
a different effect as regards metre, has it not ? How 
do you account for that ? And why is it that ** How 
it Strikes a Contemporary " impresses you at once as 
belonging to the same class with "Transcendentalism " 
as to metre and poetic manner ? How are the meta- 
phors of the harp as opposed to the horn, the flowers 
with tongues, to the '* sudden rose itself" employed 
to bring out the central idea of the poem ? 

Are there very few similes in the poem ? And 
aside from the symbol of the king suggesting a 
mightier King, is there any symbolism fitting and 
making known the central idea, as in ** Memorabilia," 
*< Popularity," and ** Transcendentalism " ? What 
is there in the composition of the poem to account for 
this poetic baldness ? Is there any reason why it is 
appropriate ? 

**At the 'Mermaid' " is distinguished in metre 
from the other poems of the Shakespearian group, — all 
of which have a four-stressed line, — ■ not merely by its 
different stanza form, — and notice that this is different 
in each poem, — but also by its steadily trochaic foot. 
The trochaic beat is kept up with almost no excep- 
tions. Do you find any ? To do this without 
wrenching the accents, and so driving sense-emphasis 
and metrical emphasis at the same pace, makes an 
effect of an imperturbable speaker, one who is both 
self-poised and powerful ; or do you derive from the 
poem an impression of this sort ? In what lines do you 
find the normal measure humored a little ? Notice, 



THE POET 215 

with this query in mind, lines 28, 41, 58, and ask if 
these are any of them hnes where elision or repeti- 
tion of a word causes an external unevenness which 
the sense- emphasis, because of its internal influence, 
rightly cures ? Notice the rhymes and double rhymes 
occurring in the Shakespearian group. Are there more 
departures from the normal iambic metre of ** Shop " 
and the anapsstic of '* House" than in *« At the 
* Mermaid' " from its trochaic metre ? The metaphors 
used throughout ** At the * Mermaid ' " are various and 
unusual. Notice what these are : for example, sowi7ig 
song-sedition ; blozvn up by ambition, and bubble-Y\xv^y 
etc. ; breeding insight ; use to pay /// Lord my duty, 
as applied to Shakespeare's religion, and use to own a 
lord, as applied to his respect for title and rank, which 
are favorite topics of dispute ; largess; gold, brass, 
and orichalc, the first representing an idealistic view, 
the second a derogatory one, the third a rational see- 
ing of things as mixed of good and evil ; threw 
Venus y^lc. (For allusions, see Camberzuell Browning, 
Notes, Vol. IX., p. 298.) Are they appropriate to 
the speaker ? 

The German phrase '* Weltschmerz " (line 132) 
seems decidedly inappropriate. Is it a modern ex- 
pression, and not likely to have been used in the 
Elizabethan period \ Are the Bible references, <* Ba- 
laam-like " (line 92), and the quotation from the 
Gospels — Matthew xv. 17, Mark vii. 19 (lines 135 
and 136) — in keeping with Shakespeare's diction as 
we know it in the Plays ? Notice the final hit at 
Jonson (lines 143 and 144), who was reputed to be 
envious of Shakespeare, and who did succeed Daniel in 
the laureateship. 

In ** House " and *' Shop" metaphors of so many 



2i6 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

kinds are not used. Instead there is a continuous 
symbolism carried on throughout each poem. AH 
the figures used in the one poem suit the ** house " 
comparison, as in the other they suit the **shop" 
comparison. Point these out, and show how they are 
apphed in each of these poems. Sometimes there is a 
double appropriateness in these comparisons, as in the 
suggestion of the shop-keeper's studying the Ti?neSy as 
if it were not merely intended to bring up the picture 
of the man reading the newspaper while he swept the 
money in his cash drawer, but also to recall Shake- 
speare's phrase in *' Hamlet" of the study of the 
dramatist being to show forth '* the body of the time 
its form and pressure." Instance others having this 
double reference to Shakespeare. Why should there 
be this difference in the way the imagery is employed 
in **At the Mermaid" and in the two following 
poems t Is there a reason for it } And what do you 
think it is t Notice that this mode of using an image 
in all its ins and outs to symbolize the leading idea is like 
that followed in ''Memorabilia" and "Popularity," 
while " At the ' Mermaid ' " and *' How it Strikes a 
Contemporary " are more ahke in using another mode, 
and yet that they differ in using in the one case a 
great deal of imagery and in the other only a bare 
simile or so. Why ? Does each suit its speaker ? 

Trace out the application of the figure to the idea 
as it is put first in the mouth of the first speaker in 
" Touch him ne'er so lightly," and, then, in the 
rejoinder giving a different point of view. Is the 
same measure kept up in the Album Lines t Does 
the same metaphor recur in these Album Lines, and 
how is it adapted now to suit still a third purpose ? 

The lyric from '* Ferishtah " is not -idorned with 



THE POET 217 

either metaphors or symbolism. What sort of 
charm has it ? Merely the grace of well-adjusted 
rhythm and rhyme ? 

*' Poetics," like this lyric, has five-stressed lines 
alternately rhymed, bat without the double- rhymed 
couplet which concludes each stanza of the lyric. 
But *' Poetics " is like " Touch him ne'er so lightly '* 
in using the same metaphors in different ways to suit 
the expression of two different speakers regarding 
poetics. Do you also find the poem as a whole 
symbolic of the larger meaning, suggested in the 
second part of this programme, that the poet's poetics 
depend upon humanizing his metaphors ? 

How do ** Goldoni " and " The Names " compare 
as sonnets with the earlier sonnet by Browning, *' Eyes, 
calm beside thee " ? (For articles showing the different 
sonnet forms in use, see E. B. Brownlow's ** Wyatt's 
Sonnets and their Sources," and ** Curiosities in 
Sonnet Literature," Poet-lore^ Vol. III., pp. 127 and 
545, March and November, 1891.) 

Queries for DiscussioJi. — Is Browning dramatic both 
in ardstic form and in conception, even when he is 
giving forth specific truths with relation to poetic art ? 

But if it be granted that he presents different points 
of view, can it be claimed that he does not show his 
preference for a special point of view as regards the 
poet and poetic art ? 

Does he present the purely lyrical art of the sub- 
jective poet as fairly as the more objective art of the 
dramadc poet ? 



Evolution of Religion 

Page 

Vol. Text Note 

"Saul" iv 66 375 

"Christmas-Eve" iv 286 399 

"Easter-Day" iv 327 403 

" An Epistle containing the Strange Medical Ex- 
perience of Karshish, the Arab Physician" v 10 283 

" Bishop Blougram's Apology " v 49 ^93 

"Cleon" V 80 297 

" Rabbi Ben Ezra " v 175 S^o 

" A Death in the Desert " - • v 183 311 

" Caliban upon Setebos " v 204 312 

I. Topic for Papery Classworky or Private Study. 
— The Subject- Matter and Characterization. 

Hi?its : — Sketches of the subject-matter of the 
poems may be found in the Notes to the Camberwell 
Brow?iingy as given above. By following these 
through in connection with the poems. Browning's 
manner of presenting his themes may be seen in greater 
relief 

In " Caliban " we have the untutored thoughts of an 
undeveloped savage about God. Is he Hke Shake- 
speare's Caliban- in the possession of considerable in- 
telligence and an appreciation of natural beauty ? 
Notice the peculiarity of the verb in the third person 
without any pronoun, which Caliban almost always 
uses when speaking of himself. This peculiarity is 
characteristic of language in a low stage of develop- 



EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 2l'9 

ment, when distinction between first, second, and 
third person is either vague or entirely laclcing. 
Where does he represent himself as lying in the first 
stanza, and what little events in nature does he de- 
scribe as taking place around him ? Why does he 
think it will be safer for him to talk about God now 
than in the winter, and who does he mean would be 
vexed if he heard him, — Prosper ox God ? What 
dwelling does he assign to Setebos, and of what does 
he make him the creator ? Is it true to life that a 
savage should regard the moon as cold, or is that a 
fact known only to modern science? Notice the 
logicalness with which he gives a reason for his prop- 
osition in regard to Setebos. What are his reasons, 
and with what poetical simile does he illustrate ? 
Going on to give further particulars as to the creations 
of Setebos, what further reason does he give for the 
creative activity of Setebos, and what argument does 
he use to show that he could not have made things 
on any other account ? Notice the illustration he 
uses, putting himself in the place of the capricious 
creator, and what conclusion he comes to. What 
further step does Caliban take in the next stanza as to 
what the capriciousness of Setebos shows, and what 
illustration does he use to clinch his argument ? What 
modification does he make in the character already 
given Setebos, and what quality does he add, and 
how does his illustration resemble the previous ones ? 

Having decided that Setebos is rough and ill at 
ease, with his inquirmg nature Cahban must have a 
reason for it. To account for this he has to imagine 
a cause behind Setebos. Is he quite clear as to its being 
a cause or an efi'ect ? What are the characteristics of 
the *' Quiet"? And how does he illustrate by his 



220 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

own feelings ? Is his feeling in regard to the quails 
quite consistent with his pleasure in making and mar- 
ring clay, or does it show a little glimpse of aspiration 
in his nature not before observable ? He immediately 
decides that he is more interested in Setebos than in 
the "Quiet." What new idea does Caliban add in 
the second statement just following of the reason for 
Setebos creating the world, and how does he illustrate 
out of his own experience ? What difference of opin- 
ion was there between Caliban and his dam about 
Setebos and the " Quiet," and what further reason 
does Caliban give to prove that he is right in attribut- 
ing creation to Setebos ? What are Caliban's con- 
clusions in regard to the supposition that Setebos may 
like what profits him ? Notice again his illustrations 
from his own experience. What examples of the 
wantonness of Setebos does he give in the next stanza, 
and what does he conclude as to the way to please 
him? What is the only hope that things will ever 
change, and what other point of disagreement between 
Caliban and his dam is brought out ? How does 
Caliban think he would best order his life to escape 
the ire of Setebos ? What happens now in the midst 
of Cahban's theologizing, and how does it affect him? 
In '' Cleon " we follow Cleon's thoughts as he 
writes a letter to Protus in answer to one received 
from him with generous gifts. The opening lines of 
the poem are the greeting of the letter, after which 
Cleon goes on to speak of the gifts he has received. 
Notice how he does not enumerable them, but with a 
few powerful strokes portrays the scene of the unlading 
of the galley. Not only do we get an idea of the 
richness of the gifts sent, but we also receive a definite 
impression of the dwelling-place of Cleon. 



EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 221 

What do you gather from the next stanza in regard 
to the character of Protus ? What do we learn of 
Cleon himself in the next stanza in his answer to 
Protus that all he has heard of him is true ? Notice 
that Cleon is a universal artist, and how he argues 
viiat a universal composite mind such as his is greater 
than the mind of the specialist. To a judge who 
only sees one way at once, the composite mind does 
not look so great as the mind of the past great in one 
thing. Then he shows how life is like a huge mosaic, 
every man being a figure in the pattern, and that prog- 
ress is not the blotting out of what has gone before, 
but the combining of all the parts into a perfect pic- 
ture. The divine men of old had each reached at 
some one point the outmost verge of man's faculties, 
and who can ever reach farther than they did in any 
one direction ? Show the appropriateness of the 
illustration of the sphere. What fiction does Cleon 
say he once wrote out in his desire to vindicate the 
purpose of Zeus in man's life, — a thing which his 
soul cried out to Zeus to know ? But though this is 
a dream, what does he say is not a dream? And 
since all material things progress, can it be possible, 
he asks, that the soul deteriorates ? How does he 
make himself stand as a proof that the soul does not 
deteriorate ? Does he show modesty or egotism in 
this instancing of himself as an example of soul- 
progress ? In the next stanza what do we learn in 
regard to Protus' s attitude toward death, and what he 
thinks Cleon's must be ? Before answering this ques- 
tion he goes off on a long course of reasoning. Does 
he decide that admiration grows with knowledge, or 
does he seem to think it debatable ? What case does 
he suppose in order to present his argument more 



222 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

forcibly? Notice the contrast he draws between 
nature outside of man and man. Instead, however, 
of asking Zeus to add to man the quality of being able 
to realize and understand the joy and beauty of life, 
what does he think might more reasonably have been 
asked ? And why does the possession of consciousness 
seem so horrible to him ? How does Cleon prove to 
himself that Zeus, in spite of this awful failure of the 
flesh to attain to the heights of joy seen by the soul, 
has not created man to suffer simply for his own delight ? 
Still, is there any sign to show that Zeus cares ? 
And so what is the final dismal conclusion as to 
progress ? 

In answer to the supposition of Protus that Cleon 
in his art-works finds joy and will gain immortality, 
what question does he put to the King, and how does 
he illustrate the fact that an accurate view of joy is 
not the same as feeling joy ? Is the thought that his 
work lives any consolation to him ? How does he 
feel that death is even doubly horrible to him ? What 
does he dare imagine at times to be his need ? What 
hint of Cleon's attitude to Christianity is given in the 
last stanza, and to whom does it appear that Protus 
wished to send a letter if he could find from Cleon 
where it should be delivered ? 

Sum up now in a few words the conception of 
God held by Caliban and that held by Cleon. 

In ** Saul," the poet David is speaking. How 
does he say Abner greeted him ? Through this greet- 
ing do we learn what the mission of David is ? How 
does David describe Saul's appearance ? Notice the 
order in which David plays his tunes, beginning with 
those appealing to the love of nature and ending with 
what ? Note the effect upon Saul. 



EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 223 

David sings again, stanza iv. now, and instead of 
merely telling about the tunes he played, he quotes 
the words of the song. What does he celebrate in 
this song, and how is Saul affected ? Note the beauty 
of David's description of Saul's partial response to his 
music, David's growing desire to make the proper 
appeal to the King, and his attempt in the next song. 

Still, though the King is pleased by the immortality 
of deed promised him in this, the "sign" of his cure 
is yet lacking. In this scene David's love for Saul 
reaches its chmax, and in what does this result ? 
Notice that he drops his harp and song here, changes 
from the poet to the prophet. It is to be observed, 
also, that, although the truth comes upon him with 
the force of a revelation, he yet supplements it with 
his own reasoning powers. Show in what way he 
does this. Does Browning's portraiture of David as 
a poet, thinker, and prophet, agree with the impression 
we get of him from the Bible ? 

Notice the contrast between the attitude of Cleon 
and Ben Ezra. Although the Hebrew considers age 
the best, what does he feel about the hopes and fears 
of youth ? He does not remonstrate on account of 
them, but prizes them. Notice the poetical imagery 
of the second stanza. In saying (iv.) that it were a 
poor vaunt of life were man but made to feed on joy, 
he is again opposed to Cleon. What does he rejoice 
over and welcome, and what comforts him ? Failure, 
so horrible to Cleon, is a joy to Ben Ezra. What 
does he recognize with Cleon is the distinction be- 
tween man and brute ? Do they not equally recog- 
nize the inadequateness of the flesh to keep pace with 
the soul ? Just as after declaring old age superior he 
then proceeds to show the need and use of youth as a 



224 



BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 



complement, so after declaring the superiority of the 
soul Ezra proceeds to show the use and need of the 
flesh. The beauty of all material things appears to 
him, and he is filled with the goodness of life and 
praise for its Creator. Whatever failure may appear 
in the flesh, he has faith that the maker will sometime 
remake complete. 

Does he indicate in the next two stanzas a desire 
that the remaking complete will be to raise the flesh 
so that it will be as equal to the soul's needs as the 
brutes' is to theirs, since, pleasant as the flesh is now, 
the soul always yearns for rest ? He hopes that we 
may not always say that progress is in spite of flesh, 
but that flesh helps soul as soul helps flesh. 

In xiii. he returns to the first thought of welcoming 
age. Show how he enlarges upon the idea, and what 
he considers are all the advantages of old age, and 
what is best suited to youth in contrast with old age 
up to stanza xxiii. 

What does he decide (xxiii.) are the important 
things in life ? (xxvi. ) Enlarging upon the simile 
of the potter's wheel, what ideas does he evolve 
from it about the permanence of truth } Explain the 
force of the imagery in xxix. (xxx. ) The imagery in 
this stanza is somewhat obscure, but life having 
already been compared to a vase or cup, Ben Ezra 
means by this imagery that the uses of life to God are 
the important things to be considered, that our lives 
are the cup for the festive board of the Lord. When 
the cup is finally complete, what need to think of the 
stress of earth's wheel? What is the concluding 
thought of the poem ? 

" An Epistle " is a companion picture to '* Cleon," 
presenting in a letter the attitude of a learned Arab 



EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 225 

toward the great fact of that time. He introduces 
himself and the person to whom he is writing in the 
greeting of the letter. How much do you learn of 
both in this preliminary greeting ? Note, in the next 
paragraph, how he begins his letter by talking of any- 
thing and everything but the one thing he really wants 
to talk about. Who do we learn is to carry the 
letter f In the next paragraph his anxiety to tell his 
experience gets the better of his reluctance. Can 
you guess what are the causes of his reluctance to tell ? 
Observe the off-hand way in which he begins to tell 
the story. Does he betray his deep interest in it as 
he goes on .? Is it the fact of the cure that impresses 
him most, or the effect of the cure upon Lazarus's 
mind ? 

How does he describe Lazarus and his manner of 
looking at life ? Is it this which makes Karshish think 
the cure of a different nature from those he has been 
used to in his medical experience ? 

Is the difficulty with Lazarus that, in his larger view 
of life, he has given up the exercise of human initia- 
tive and has become a sort of fatalist ? 

Notice the Arab's apologetic manner when telling 
what Lazarus says of the Nazarene who cured him ; 
his attempt to dismiss it as a trivial matter, while he 
turns to things of more moment like the blue-flower- 
ing borage ; his return to the subject again in spite 
of himself, and his evident wish that such a story might 
be true. 

Notice the differences between the learning of Cleon 
and that of Karshish. Which seems to have the more 
need of a new religion, and which seems to be more 
deeply sceptical } 

What do you learn from the first stanza of ''A 
15 



226 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Death in the Desert "as to the nature and form of 
the communication which the speaker in the poem is 
to make ? In the next eight paragraphs what scene is 
vividly portrayed by Pamphylax in his parchment? 
Is there anything so far to indicate whose death-bed 
is being described ? Has sufficient of the personality 
of the dying man been revealed to make the stanzas 
following intelligible ? Explain how he describes him- 
self to be so withdrawn into his depths that his 
consciousness of his own or others' personality is 
dimmed and he could believe those about him to be 
James and Peter, or even John himself. How does 
the speaker of the poem expound the doctrine of the 
dying man in regard to the soul, and how does this 
explain his feelings as he describes them in the preced- 
ing stanza ? 

With what image does he further explain his sensa- 
tions in the next stanza, and how does he reveal who 
he really is? What doubt suggests itself to him, and 
what account of his past life does he give in the nexl 
two stanzas ? What idea do we receive of his age 
and of his influence as long as he is alive ? Sum up the 
arguments used by him in the next stanza as assurance 
for those unborn generations who have not themselves 
seen or heard, and who he feels will have doubts of 
the truth. Are the arguments in the nature of proof, 
or are they simply an expression of his own over- 
whelming sense of the truth of what he has seen and 
heard ? 

Is the main thought to be gained from the follow- 
ing stanza that the reahzation of divine love is the 
most important need of man, and that just how it was 
revealed to man is not so important as the fact that it 
has been revealed in some way ? 



EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 227 

In the next stanza is there any force in his argu- 
ment as a proof of the truth of what he has seen, or 
is it rather a reiteration of the fact that he is sure of it 
himself? What arguments of the doubter does John 
next present, and how does he meet them ? The first 
argument he presents he calls the Pagan's teaching. 
How does he modify it in the next following stanza ? 
Point out the essential difference in the two arguments, 
and also the points of resemblance. In the next 
stanza what reasons does he give for the weakness of 
what he calls the Pagan's teaching ? What further 
questionings of the doubter does he then present ? 

Sum up his final arguments. Does he not allow 
some good in a Pagan's way of arriving at the truth 
— that is, a yearning for it until he crystallizes it into 
a set form which is an image at least of the truth ? 
What are the few remaining stanzas (except the last) 
taken up with ? What is meant in the last stanza by 
Cerinthus being lost ? What other passage in the 
poem throws light on the attitude of Cerinthus ? 
From his whole course of argument do you get the 
impression that John's belief rests upon faith and not 
upon reason ? 

How is the scene of the poem presented in the first 
stanza of '* Bishop Blougram " ? Notice how the 
Bishop next touches off what he supposes to be the 
attitude of Gigadibs towards him in his social capacity. 
Is this a true reading of Gigadibs's character, or is the 
Bishop so used to having court paid to him that he 
takes it for granted a poor literary man will feel hon- 
ored by his attentions ? Through the Bishop's talk, 
what sort of criticism do we learn Gigadibs had been 
making ? 

What do you think of the Bishop's ideal of taking 



228 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

things as we find them and making them as fair as 
possible, in comparison with Gigadibs's, of forming an 
ideal of life which we try to realize ? (See lines 86-99.) 
Does the simile which the Bishop brings forward to 
illustrate the two ideals do justice to Gigadibs's, con- 
sidering that the Bishop, by following his ideal, could 
surround himself with just such treasures as he uses to 
point his argument against Gigadibs, while Gigadibs, 
in following his ideal, would be likely to have little 
material comfort of any sort ? What do you think of 
the Bishop's argument that one cannot stay fixed in 
unbehef any more than he can in belief? Notice 
his remark to the effect that one feels round to find 
some 567156 in which accepted beliefs may be the 
** Way, the Truth, the Life." Having proved to his 
satisfaction that one must either have a life of doubt 
diversified by faith or of faith diversified by doubt, 
what utilitarian reasons does he give for himself pre- 
ferring the former ? Since he can get what he best 
likes this way, and cannot get it without announcing 
to the world his unequivocal belief, he turns his belief 
side toward the world and keeps his doubts to himself. 
He next proceeds to show why, having reached this 
conviction, he chose the most absolute form of faith. 
How does his utiUtarianism assert itself here ? 

Does Gigadibs appear to be impressed with the 
weight of the Bishop's arguments ? How would the 
Bishop defend himself, suppose he were to admit 
Gigadibs's implications that he is a beast ? Is his 
argument here sound, or has it a touch of sophistry ? 
It is equivalent to saying, <* God has made me selfish, 
comfort-loving, and power-loving, therefore I will 
make myself as much stronger in these ways as I 
can," However, he isn't going to admit himself so 



EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 229 

low, and answering to the objection that the world 
will think him either a fool or a knave, what further 
utilitarian argument does he bring forth ? 

As Gigadibs still refuses to admire him, he wants 
to know if he would like him to be a Napoleon or a 
Shakespeare. Are his reasons for not attempting any 
such ideals thoroughly in character ? 

What does Blougram reply to Gigadibs' s objection 
that such imperfect faith cannot accomplish faith's 
work any better than unbelief? 

Does Blougram' s reply (line 600) seem to mean 
that the existence of doubt gives the human will a 
chance to choose between faith and doubt, and the 
more doubts one has,, the more praiseworthy it is to 
will to keep oneself in an attitude of faith ? 

Do you agree with Blougram that belief can be a 
matter of will ? Or must it be a matter of conviction ? 

What do you think of Blougram' s argument that 
creation is meant to hide God all it can ? In saying 
that with him faith means perpetual unbelief, he 
implies that belief and faith are not correlative terms, 
but the very preservation of faith depends upon un- 
belief, because its value consists in its being held to in 
the face of all odds. Notice his various illustrations 
of this point. 

What has the Bishop to say to the objection of 
Gigadibs, that he views life narrowly and grossly ? 
Do you agree with his argument, that when you are 
living in the world you may as well take all the world 
has to offer and be worldly ? Gigadibs still holds out 
that it would be better frankly to confess his attitude 
toward the world. And here the Bishop pounces on 
him. Is his (Gigadibs's) basis of ethical conduct upon 
any more truthful basis than the Bishop's faith : 



230 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

He finally rounds out his argument by showing that 
he has more worldly gains to show in his life than 
Gigadibs will ever have, which proves his way the 
best. The Bishop admits that there is one sort of life 
which would be better than his ; what is it ? 

What practical effect does the Bishop's talk have on 
Gigadibs ? Point out the false steps in the Bishop's 
argument. Is whatever he says of good rendered false 
by his constantly proving his points on the basis of 
their practical, material advantage to himself? 

If Gigadibs had been as subtle in argument as the 
Bishop, could he have beaten him ? 

For further suggestions on *' Christmas-Eve " and 
*' Easter-Day " than those given in the Notes, see 
Introduction to Vol. IV. Ca?nberwell Browning. 
Follow carefully the thought-moods as sketched in the 
abstract of these two poems, and notice the forms of 
expression in which they are clothed as indicated in 
the Introduction. Contrast the attitude of mind of 
such a character as the speaker in this poem with 
that of Blougram's, — the one who is religious because 
he deliberately chooses religion as the most expedient 
scheme of life, the other whose whole soul is filled 
with religious aspiration, — the one whose doubts 
revolve about orthodox creeds, the other who realizes 
that the truth or falsity of orthodox creeds does not 
affect the essential truths of religion, namely, that 
God is Love and Power, revealable to every human 
soul directly, through its recognition of power in the 
universe and of love in its own heart. There would 
have been room in this man's theology for a Bishop 
Blougram, would there not ? The Bishop's special 
way of holding on to faith was probably the only way 
in which he could catch even a glimpse of the eternal 



EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 231 

verities of religion, just as the Dissenters had their way 
of praising God. 

Queries for Discussion. — How many of the char- 
acters in these poems are drawn from actual life ? 

How many of the poems may be said to have 
sources, and how many of them are purely imaginary ? 

Dr. Charles G. Ames, writing upon " Caliban " 
in the published volume of ** Boston Browning Society 
Papers," says : — 

** Three things I get directly from the poem : ( i ) 
It is a satire upon all who plant themselves upon the 
narrow island of individualism and think to reach com- 
pleteness of character and culture without sharing the 
common life of the world. (2) It is a protest against 
the vagaries of the understanding, divorced from the 
deeper reason and the moral sense . . . (3) But 
chiefly, I think, the poet means it as a satire upon all 
religious theories which construct a divinity out of the 
imperfections of humanity, instead of submitting hu- 
manity to be inspired and moulded by the perfections 
of divinity." 

Do you think Browning had any such didactic pur- 
pose in writing this poem, or that he merely de- 
sired to present graphically a low phase of religious 
aspiration ? 

Does this prevent one from drawing any moral 
lesson at all from the poem ? 

Do you draw the same lessons or different ones from 
those suggested by Mr. Ames ? 

Is the portraiture of John in agreement with his 
personality as derivable from the New Testament ? 

On this point Mrs. M. G. Glazebrook says, in her 
paper on *^ A Death in the Desert " in the published 
volume of ** Browning Studies " : — 



23 2 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

*« We have again the loved and loving disciple v^^ho 
leant on his Master's breast at supper, and in his old 
age continually bade his 'little children, love one an- 
other.' He is learned in Greek philosophy and spec- 
ulative, as the author of the Gospel called by his name 
must have been ; mystical and visionary as became 
him who had received the revelation of Patmos. He 
is full of the responsibility which rests upon him as the 
last survivor of those who had seen and known Christ; 
fearful, also, of the heresies and ' Anti-Christs ' al- 
ready beginning to disturb the Church, of whom the 
Ebionites, or followers of Cerinthus, who denied his 
Lord's divinity, give him cause for most anxiety." 

n. Topic for Paper, Classworh, or Private Study. 
— Phases of Religious Thought Illustrated in these 
Poems. 

Hints : — Each one of these poems may be re- 
garded as marking an especial phase of religious de- 
velopment. Beginning with Caliban, who stands for 
the natural, uncultured reasoning of the savage, 
** Saul" next gives the essence of the prophetic period 
of Jewish religious development. In Cleon We have 
the cultured, intellectual reasoning of a Greek at a 
time when any inspiration the Greek religion ever had 
has been dissipated in the light of cold reason, yet 
there is present the same religious yearning as there is 
in David. *'An Episde " gives still another view, 
that of an Arab confronted with the problem of the 
new revealed religion. 

** A Death in the Desert" gives the reminiscent 
mood of the man who was actually a contemporary of 
the event prophesied by David. Rabbi Ben Ezra 
gives that of a Jew of later date. In ** Bishop Blou- 
gram " and *' Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day" we 



EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 233 

come down to religious reasoning of the nineteenth 
century. 

Give an account of the attributes of Setebos as con- 
ceived by Caliban. Show how Caliban's conception 
is a mingling of his observations of the processes of 
nature and his own interpretations of these processes. 
Had he observed in nature any other qualities than 
those of capriciousness and cruelty ? Is his interpreta- 
tion colored by the treatment he has received from 
Prospero ? Notice how his illustrations are all drawn 
from his own experience. 

Why do you suppose he thought the stars were not 
made by Setebos ? Perhaps because they seemed to 
him to be beyond the reach of that god's capricious- 
ness. Is his notion that above Setebos reigns another 
God, the Quiet, indicative of aspiration, though of a 
very rude sort, in Caliban's nature ? 

Is there any trace of love in Caliban's reasoning.? 
Had he experienced any love in his life ,? Setebos is 
a god of power only, but is he a god of Omnipotent 
power ? Notice that Caliban is not quite sure whether 
he was made by the Quiet or whether he conquered 
the Quiet. Does this suggest to your mind the Greek 
myth of Saturn and Jupiter? 

Is there any suggestion of an embryonic problem 
of evil in Caliban's mind.? (See line 170 fol.) 
Caliban's solution of the existence of evil is that Setebos 
does all for his own amusement. Should you say, on 
the whole, that Caliban is a little better than the god 
he imagines ? If so, how does he show it ? What is 
his opinion about an after-life ? Having discovered 
just what Caliban's religious conceptions are, it will 
be interesting to show how close they are to a true 
savage religion. 



234 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Mr. Arthur Symons says, in speaking of this poem : 
" I think Mr. Huxley has said that the poem is a 
truly scientific representation of the development of 
religious ideas in primitive man." Unfortunately 
scholars are not all agreed as to the exact nature of 
primitive religious ideas, some contending that fear 
played a large part in the origin of religion, others 
that love was the root of religious aspiration, and others 
that religion originated in ancestor worship. There 
are still other theories to be considered, and if it be 
desired to go into the matter thoroughly, the following 
books may be consulted: Fiske's ** Myths and Myth- 
Makers," chapter on *' The Primeval Ghost World; " 
also his «* Idea of God;" Tylor's ** Primitive Cul- 
ture;" Max Miiller's Essays on *' The Science of 
Religion," in ** Chips from a German Workshop" 
and ** Contributions to the Science of Mythology ; " 
Andrew Lang's ** Custom and Myth" and ** Myth, 
Ritual and Religion;" Dr. D. G. Brinton's ** Re- 
ligions of Primitive Peoples." 

It may be said that Caliban's theology fits in best 
with the assumption that savage religion began with 
ancestor worship mingled with the emotion of fear, 
from which would finally come the god who made all 
things. Having arrived at that stage, it is easy to 
imagine a thinking savage wondering why his god 
treated his creations in the way he did, and then 
drawing conclusions as to his nature. 

Turning to " Saul," what do you find are the chief 
characteristics of David's religious conceptions? He 
has discovered a god in nature, just as Caliban 
did ; how do his concepdons of this god in nature 
differ from those of Caliban ? How does his concep- 
tion of God become enlarged ? Is this enlarged con- 



EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 235 

ception a reflection of his own nature, just as Caliban's 
was a reflection of his ? David, however, is conscious 
that in loving more than he had supposed God loved, 
he is putting himself above God, and so the truth 
breaks in upon him that God's love must be greater 
than his, a m.ere man's, and that, being all-powerful, he 
can accomplish what he (David) can only aspire to 
do. Is there anything in the poem to indicate that 
David's prophecy was the result of a supernatural 
revelation, or does it seem to be the natural unfolding 
of God's spirit within David so that he sees far ahead 
of other men ? For light upon Browning's truthful- 
ness in the portraiture of this period of religious 
aspiration, see Darmesteter's ** Selected Essays," trans, 
by Helen B. Jastrow, and the Essay on ** Saul " in 
J. T. Nettleship's '* Robert Browning: Essays and 
Thoughts." 

In Cleon the crude observation and sensations of 
the savage have given place to the cultured observation 
and sensations of the Greek. He has advanced far 
beyond that stage where his God is a reflection of 
himself Zeus is really a survival from a more 
savage age, which fails to come up to the require- 
ments of Cleon. Thence his great disquietude, and 
his reaching out toward a conception of God that 
includes the idea of love and care. But while Cahban 
bases his reasoning on merely personal experiences, 
Cleon bases his not only upon his own experiences, 
but upon the sympathy v^hich he feels with others. 
Aware of the existence of love in himself and others, 
he longs for some sign that love is the ruling quahty 
of the Divine mind. The sign of this love would be 
the assurance that joy such as the soul sees might one 
day be in truth experienced, and that the progress of 



236 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

the soul, which is the distinctive mark of man as sepa- 
rated from th^ brute, is not to end in nothing.' 

Do you agree with Cleon that the sympathetic mind 
which enters into sympathy with all forms of art and 
reaches a high point, if not the highest in the creation 
of all, is a more developed mind than that which is 
specially developed in one direction and thereby 
reaches the highest point ? Do you think that the 
highest enjoyment comes from direct experience or 
active participation, or from entering into sympathy 
with the experience of others ? Can sympathy be 
entire without a personal knowledge of the same thing ? 
For example, is "one happier playing the piano him- 
self, even if he does it only moderately well, or 
listening to a great performer ? Or can one really 
enjoy great playing if he has not tried to do the same 
thing himself? Which is the ideal of Cleon ? 

Notice that Saul and Cleon both want the same 
assurance, that of personal immortality. Has Cleon 
any notion of evolution? Do you agree with him 
that new things do not blot out the old, but that all 
persist to form at last a completed whole ? Notice 
that Cleon rejects just the sort of manifestation from 
the infinite that he longs for. Why do you suppose 
that is ? Because he listens only to the dictates of his 
intellect, and not at all to the dictates of his heart ? 
Does Browning's Cleon truly portray Greek thought 
at the time of Christ ? (For information on this point, 
see Zeller's ** A History of Eclecticism in Greek 
Philosophy," Lewes's " History of Philosophy,'* 
Vol. I., Eighth and Ninth Epochs.) 

In *« A Death in the Desert" the God of love 
is made manifest. Against all supposable doubts 
John holds firm ground, yet he is very liberal in his 



EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 237 

attitude toward those who have had aspirations leading 
to truth. Observe how John sketches the stages of 
religious belief in the passage beginning, *' first, like a 
brute obliged by facts to learn," like Caliban ; next, as 
*<man may, obliged by his own mind," like Cleon. 
But even such reasoners about God as Caliban and 
Cleon do it through the gift of God, — note passage 
following. And all this is " midway help " till the 
fact be reached indeed through the divine incarna- 
tion. He accepts the fact of man's anthropomorphic 
conceptions of God, and declares that they have 
glimmers of truth, but that in Christ we have the 
truth indeed ; no subjective conception emanating 
from the mind of man, but an objective truth. 

What do you think of John's theory of the mira- 
cles ? Is his ground very strong, or does it leave a 
loop-hole for a natural instead of a supernatural ex- 
planation of them ? What is the theory of life to 
be deduced from this poem } Mrs. Glazebrook thus 
sums it up: ** Man's life consists in never ceasing 
progress. The god-like power is imparted to him 
gradually, and step by step he approaches nearer to 
absolute truth — to divine perfection. But in this 
mortal life the goal can never be attained : the ideal 
which he strives to realize here, exists only in heaven, 
and awaits him as a reward of all his faithful efforts. 
For, should he cease to strive, and renounce the 
divine ideals, he forfeits his right to life, and brings 
upon himself the condemnation of death." What re- 
lation to John's theories of life has his belief in regard 
to the relations of the body, mind, and soul } Upon 
this point Professor Corson writes, in his *' Intro- 
duction to the Study of Browning " : " The doctrine 
of the trinal unity of man (the what Does, what 



238 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Knows, what Is) ascribed to John (Hnes 82-104) 
and upon which his discourse may be said to pro- 
ceed, leads up to the presentation of the final stage 
of the Christian life on earth — that stage when 
man has won his way to the Kingdom of the * what 
Is ' within himself, and when he no longer needs 
the outward supports to his faith which he needed 
before he passed from the ' what Knows.' Chris- 
tianity is a religion which is only secondarily a 
doctrine addressed to the ' what Knows.' It is 
first of all a religion whose fountain-head is a Per- 
sonality in whom all that is spiritually potential in 
man was realized, and in responding to whom 
the soul of man is quickened and regenerated." 
Would such a theory of life as this have been possible 
to John, or is it very suggestive of nineteenth-century 
philosophy .? This poem was written with a view to 
answering the attacks made upon the historical bases 
of Christianity by such men as Strauss and Renan. 
To quote Mrs. Glazebrook again, '*In the critical 
examination of the evangelical records, the Fourth 
Gospel suffered most. . . . Strauss pronounced it 
to be a controversial work, written late in the second 
century after Christ, by a profound theologian of the 
Greek Gnostic and anti-Jewish school, whose design 
was not to add another to the existing biographies of 
Christ, not to represent him as a real man, nor to 
give an account of any human life, but to produce 
an elaborate theological work in which, under the 
veil of allegory, the Neo-platonic conception of Christ 
as the Logos, the realized Word of God, the divine 
principle of light and life should be developed." 
If it be desired to pursue these investigations further, 
see Renan's **Life of Christ," and Strauss's '* Life 



EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 239 

of Christ" which has been translated by George 
Eliot; also Mrs. Glazebrook's article on "A Death 
in the Desert" in ''Browning Studies." 

In " An Epistle " is there any definite presen- 
tation of a conception of God ? There is depicted 
rather the effect on character of a glimpse of life from 
the divine standpoint. According to Karshish, the 
effect has not been altogether good upon Lazarus. 
Is that because an infinite view of life showing how 
all works together for good, confuses a finite intelli- 
gence, so that he is no longer able to direct his will 
toward working for any positive ideal, but leaves 
himself too much in the hands of God and is guided 
therefore by emotions ? On the other hand, perhaps 
Karshish did not rightly interpret the character of 
Lazarus, because his own mind was biassed by a too 
confined and narrow view of life. Which do you 
think more likely ? It will be interesting here to 
compare what the poet says, evidently in his own 
person, in <* Two Poets of Croisic " (lines 464—528). 

How does the attitude of Karshish difler from 
that of Cleon? Should you say that he was not as 
conscious as Cleon of the need of a new revelation 
in religion, yet that he could more easily be con- 
vinced of its truth ? 

Of what race were the Arabs, and what was their 
religion at that time ? Were they distinguished for 
their scientific attainments, as the poem indicates ? 
(For information on these topics, see ** Encyclopsedia 
Britannica," article ** Arabia.") 

In ** Rabbi Ben Ezra" we find that the Rabbi 
agrees with Cleon as to the progress of the human 
soul. But Cleon's progress is an intellectual progress, 
while Ezra's is a spiritual progress. While Cleon 



240 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

longs for the enjoyment of the full development of 
self, Ezra longs for the full development of self only 
that he may give delight to his Creator. Where 
Cleon's aspirations make the failure to attain them 
seem a black horror, Ezra's aspirations fill him v^^ith 
hope. He belongs to the race that has full assurance 
of the existence of a God who watches over the affairs 
of men, but a God jealous of his own prerogatives. 
Is there much assurance of the love of God as Ezra 
conceives him ? Is he not rather like a perfect archi- 
tect who fashions men for his own glory, differing 
from CaHban's God mainly in the fact that, instead of 
enjoying the suffering which he causes mankind, he 
administers it with love as a means of perfecting man 
to grace the after time ? 

How truthful a representation of Jewish opinion is 
this poem ? (For this see Camberwell Browning, Notes, 
p. 311.) Miss Mary M. Cohen, writing on ** Brown- 
ing's Hebraic Sympathies " {^Poet-lore y Vol. III., pp. 
250-254, May, 1 891), says that in this poem ''Brown- 
ing has seized the essence of Jewish faith and hope, 
holding it aloft in the crystal of language. There is 
no doubt that the writer had drunk deeply at the well 
of Hebraic thought ; not otherwise could he have com- 
posed verses which in their majestic music and their 
noble meaning seem to echo something of the solemn 
earnestness and inspiration of Isaiah or Job." 

In "Bishop Blougram " we have reflected all the 
intellectual doubts of a cultured man of the nineteenth 
century, and a way of meeting them peculiar to a 
certain type of mind. Suppose belief is swept away 
as it was in the Bishop's case, is there anything 
against his argument, that it will be best for himself 
and humanicv if he retain what was once his belief as 



EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 241 

a living ideal, in the faith that it has a better chance 
of being the truth than an ideal based upon unbelief? 
But does not the Bishop utterly stultify himself by 
making the good he wishes to gain almost absolutely 
selfish and worldly, and also by posing to the world 
as a sincere and devout believer ? The effect of un- 
behef in this century has been to send a good many 
intellectual men into the Church of Rome. Does 
Browning in this poem present truthfully the bases of 
their faith, at the same time that in Blcugram he 
portrays a type of a worldly nature rather than that 
of a pious nature? Notice Cardinal Wiseman's criti- 
cism of the poem quoted in Notes, Camberwell 
B?'ow?n?igy p. 295. For comparison with Browning's 
treatment of the subject, see Ward's **The Life and 
Times of Cardinal Wiseman," chap, xxiii.; Wise- 
man's ** Lectures on Science and Revealed Religion." 

In '* Christmas-Eve " the religious attitude is given 
of a man who sees that the truth of rehgion is not in 
outward forms or dogmas, which vary according to 
the needs of different individuals, but that it is in the 
fundamental aspiration of every soul toward God. 
What does the speaker give as the basis of his own 
individual faith ? Should you say that his belief was 
dependent upon the acceptance of historical Christian- 
ity, or does he use some of its dogmas as symbols of 
the highest possible conceptions in religion ? Is he 
right in insisting that he cannot express truth for any 
one but himself? 

In ** Easter-Day " the difHculties of living a 
Christian life are discussed. What are these diffi- 
culties ? What relation should this life have to an 
infinite beyond ? Compare Bishop Blougram's ideals 
of living with the speaker's in this poem. Contrast 
16 



242 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

this poet's way of facing and answering doubts with 
the Bishop's. What is the difference in the nature 
of the doubts of a Cleon, the Bishop, and those 
expressed in '* Easter-Day " ? Do the ideals ex- 
pressed in ** Christmas-Eve " and ** Easter-Day " 
appeal to you as being both rational and mystical, and 
full of deep religious conviction despite the doubts, 
not answered certainly with orthodox arguments ? 

Queries for Discussion. — It has been objected that 
Caliban's theology is not truly primitive, but might 
it be said that the intention of Browning is not so 
much to give an exact representation of savage ideas 
of God, as to show how the conception of God is 
colored by the experiences and observations of man 
in undeveloped stages of mind ? Dr. Berdoe con- 
siders Caliban's theology to be much like that of 
Calvin (of whom an account may be found in the 
** Encyclopaedia Britannica," Account of Calvin). 
Do you see the resemblances ? 

Writing upon this point in Poet-lore (Vol. III., 
p. 294, May, 1 891), Dr. Hugh A. Clarke says: 
** These anthropomorphic conceptions of deity have, 
when presented in their native ugliness with the 
directness and incisiveness of this poem, so repellent 
an aspect that we feel compelled to repudiate them, 
for ourselves if not for our neighbors. But they are 
in some form or another so universal, and the faculty 
of seeing motes in each other's eyes being equally so, 
it is not to be wondered at that this poem has been 
used as a stone to throw, now at the Agnostic, now 
at the Calvinist, now at the Evangelical. That it 
hits every one at whom it is thrown is the best proof 
that the throwers would do well to examine their 
own domestic architecture to discover whether or 



EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 243 

not there was an over-sufficiency of glass in its 
construction." 

Is the prophecy put into David's mouth, in " Saul," 
more explicit than is warranted by the prophetic ut- 
terances attributed to the real David ? See Psalms ii., 
viii., xiv., xxii., xl., xlv., Ixviii., Ixix., Ixxxix., xci. 
Miss Cohen, in the article already cited, says : *' I find 
the poet astonishingly correct, as a rule, in his grasp of 
the Hebraic nature. In but one poem does he seem 
to me to introduce a feature with which I can justly 
find fault ; I mean the anachronism and unfitness of 
attaching the Trinitarian idea to such a distinctly 
Jewish poem as 'Saul.' " 

Do the conclusions of *' A Death in the Desert " 
seem to you to form a strong argument against Strauss 
and Renan .? Or does it seem to you that there is a 
certain begging of the question, not only on account 
of the fact that there are weak points in the argument, 
but because the poet has made the mouthpiece of his 
arguments John himself ? Upon these points Mrs. 
Glazebrook remarks that *'The tendency of the argu- 
ment is to diminish the importance of the original 
events — historical or traditional — on which the Chris- 
tian religion is based. * It is not worth while,' the 
writer seems to say to Strauss and his followers, * to 
occupy ourselves with discussions about miracles and 
events, which are said to have taken place a long time 
ago, and can now neither be denied nor proved. 
What we are concerned with is Christianity as it is 
now : as a religion which the human mind has, through 
many generations, developed, purified, spiritualized ; 
And which has reacted on human nature and made it 
wijer and nobler. . . . But it m.ay in return very 
justly be asked if Mr. Browning can really intend to 



244 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

advocate that something less than perfect truthfuhiess, 
which woald be implied in the continued unquestion- 
ing acceptance of a dogmatic rehgion in its entirety, 
after the bases of many of its doctrines have been 
impugned. . . . All that we know of Mr. Brown- 
ing's candour and keenness of perception forbids us to 
accept such a conclusion. But it is quite consistent 
vs^ith his custom.iry method to have put the case against 
Strauss in this forcible, dramatic form. . . . His reli- 
gious sense was revolted by the assumption that there 
was nothing in Christianity which could survive the 
destruction of the miraculous and supernatural elements 
in its history. He desired to represent Christianity as 
an entirely spiritual religion, independent of external, 
material agencies." 

Are these poems all thoroughly dramatic in their 
presentation of religious thought, or are there certain 
resemblances of thought in them which show Brown- 
Lig's own bias toward a philosophy of evolution } 

If they are not all entirely dramatic, which single 
poem would you instance as reflecting most nearly the 
poet's own standpoint ? 

Which do you consider presents the most developed 
point of view ? 

III. Topic for Papery Classwork, or Private Study. 
Form and Ornamentation. 

Hints : — All these poems are in monologue form, 
though they differ considerably in the manner of 
presentation. *' Caliban," for example, gives directly 
the thoughts of the speaker, and only these, but with- 
out any explicit description of his life. An excellent 
idea of the way he spends his time is revealed by 
means of the illustrations which he uses. These il- 
lustrations, therefore, serve three purposes : to make 



EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 



245 



clear his thought, to give a glimpse of his way of liv- 
ing, and to show that his conception of Setebos is the 
result of his own experiences. In " Saul " the action 
is not present, as it is in '* Caliban," but David gives 
a description of an event that has happened to him, 
telling what he himself had done and felt, what 
Abner had said, how Saul had looked, what he did, 
and so on, always using the indirect method of pre- 
senting the thought. In ** Cleon " the action is pres- 
ent again ; we follow him as he writes his letter to 
Protus, in the course of which w^e get not only Cleon' s 
thoughts, but frequent glimpses of the thoughts of 
Protus by means of Cleon's answers, and furthermore, 
owing to the nature of the questions put by Protus, we 
get a complete view of Cleon's personality ; again, by 
means of the illustrations introduced, we get a com- 
plete picture of the scene. Is there any word of 
direct description of the scene, or is it in every in- 
stance introduced as the accompaniment of a thought ? 
"An Epistle " bears somewhat the same sort of rela- 
tion to ** Cleon," artistically, as '*Saul" does to 
*' Caliban." Although we follow Karshish as he 
writes his letter, the action is past instead of present, 
because he tells of an event that has happened to him. 
Do we learn as much about the personality of Karshish 
as we do about that of Cleon ? Is any glimpse gained 
of the personality of Abib, to whom he is writing.? 
Do we get as explicit a picture of the conditions un- 
der which the letter is being written as in ** Cleon " ? 
Of what present events is a view given ? 

In " A Death in the Desert " the speaker does 
not reveal himself at all ; he is little more than the 
mouthpiece for the document of Pamphylax. The 
document gives an account of the scene of John's 



246 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

death and of what he said on his death-bed. But 
there is the complexity so often seen in Browning's 
monologues, through John's imagining the arguments 
of the doubters, so that there are really two lines of 
thought carried on in the poem. 

Notice that the little the speaker in the poem has to 
say is put in brackets. How much do his remarks 
bear upon the arguments of the poem ? What Pam- 
phylax says is printed direct, except when he is quot- 
ing his own past remarks. All that John says is 
quoted, all that his imagined opponents say is single 
quoted. Is there anything at all given of the occasion 
and surroundings of the speaker ? What is given of 
the occasion of Pamphylax's relation of the story ? 
Does the whole scene in the desert come out through 
the direct description of Pamphylax, or is some of it 
brought out in the course of John's talk ? ** Rabbi 
Ben Ezra" is the simplest of the monologues. It 
might be called a lyrical expression of the mood of the 
Rabbi, by means of which we discover his attitude 
toward life and God. Is there either action or scene 
portrayed, or any hint of any other personaHty .? In 
** BJougram," again, a situation in the present is de- 
picted. The Bishop does all the actual talking, but a 
clear idea of the remarks of Mr. Gigadibs may be 
gathered from the Bishop's replies to him. Is the 
manner of the poem more like **Cleon" than it is 
like that of any of the others under consideration ? 
Point out the resemblances. ** Christmas-Eve " comes 
under another head again. The speaker tells of an 
adventure he had, and of the visions he had in the 
midst of it. The scene, the visions, the thought, and 
the emotions are all presented by means of direct de- 
scription, and the only direct actor in the poem is the 



EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 24.^ 

speaker, and all the action he tells about is past. 
** Easter-Day " is different again. There are two 
speakers in it, one talking directly, the other talking 
in quotation marks, so that, instead of getting the 
other personality through the answers of the speaker 
in the poem, as in **Blougram" and ** Cleon," we 
get them by means of exact quotation of his remarks. 
To which of the other poems is it the nearest approach 
in form ? 

The structure of these poems does not offer any 
difficulties. "Caliban," ** Cleon," "An Epistle," 
** A Death in the Desert," and ** Blougram " are all 
in blank verse. Does this include all that are most 
dramatic in general treatment ? In which of these is 
the blank verse most regular, and in which is it least 
regular ? Does alliteration play any considerable part 
in the effect produced in these poems r Is tone 
gained chiefly by the character of the language rather 
than through the structure of the verse ? In " Cali- 
ban," for example, the especial peculiarity of language 
is the use of the third person for the first. Now, 
while Caliban does not get a very satisfactory religious 
doctrine out of his observation of nature, he certainly 
makes his observations with acuteness, and expresses 
them in picturesque and vivid language. This might 
not seem fitting to a savage intellect, but an examina- 
tion of savage myths will reveal the fact that savages 
were very acute observers of natural phenomena, that 
they clothed their observations in metaphorical and 
symbolic language which often attained great poetic 
beauty. As instances of this we may mention the 
Polynesian myth of " The Separation of Rangi and 
Papa " to be found in Tylor's *' Primitive Culture," 
and the North American Indian tale of the ** Red 



248 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Swan" given by Schoolcraft. Are Caliban's obser- 
vations of nature true to natural history ? For example, 
do fishes get frozen in wedges of ice and afterwards 
escape into the warm water, and do crabs march in a 
procession down to the sea ? Naturally, Caliban uses 
no allusions that do not come within the immediate 
range of his observation. Does Shakespeare's Cahban 
use language equally remarkable for poetic beauty ? 

In ** Cleon " the language everywhere suggests the 
life and culture of Greece. Observation of nature, pure 
and simple, is at a discount. Everything is refined 
upon, as the woman with the crocus vest that refines 
upon the women of Cleon's youth. Do you find any 
exception to the fact that his illustrations are drawn 
from the realm of man's artistic effx]irts ? In his con- 
trasting of animals with man, his observation is that 
of the scientist rather than that of the lover of nature, 
is it not ? What does he say, however, to show that 
he has an appreciation of nature, though it is not his 
chief delight ? His chief delight is the beauty of 
young and active manhood and beautiful womanhood. 
Is not the language of art and science combined with 
admiration of human beauty thoroughly characteristic 
of Grecian civilization, and does it not as surely give 
the tone to this poem as Caliban's nature illustrations 
do ? Point out all the poetical comparisons used by 
Cleon, and show from what aspects of life he draws 
them. Is his language on the whole as full of images 
as Caliban's ? Are the allusions all such as belong of 
necessity to his time ? (For allusions, see Camberwell 
Brow?ii?2g, Vol. v.. Notes, p. 297.) 

In ** An Epistle" the references are nearly all 
strictly in line with the profession of Karshish, and so 
illustrative of the particular phase of medical science 



EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 249 

practised at that time that they cannot be understood 
without special explanations. (See Camberwell Brown- 
ing, Vol. v.. Notes, p. 283.) Is the talk very full 
of images otherwise, or chiefly noticeable for its 
directness } 

Notice that in " A Death in the Desert" refer- 
ences to secular learning of any kind are almost entirely 
absent. There are, however, references to Pagan 
religion. Point these out. Notice, also, that while 
much of the language is simple and direct, it breaks 
out now and then into some glowing gem of language 
like that in lines 204 and 205, — 

*' But shudderingly, scarce a shred between 
Lie bare to the universal prick of light." 

Like Cleon, Blougram is a cultured man, but the 
things mentioned by Cleon are few in comparison 
with those mentioned by Blougram. His language is 
full of references to history, art, literature, ancient and 
modern. His remarks about himself show him to be 
surrounded with luxury, with feminine adoration, — 
to have unlimited power and influence, in fact. Aside 
from this richness of reference, observe the figures 
used, and compare the poem with Karshish and Cleon 
in this respect. (For allusions see Camberwell Brozv?i- 
ing. Vol. v.. Notes, p. 295.) 

The remaining poems are all rhymed. - '* Saul " is 
in rhymed couplets, except at a few points in the 
poem, where there is a rhymed triplet introduced. 
The rhythm flows easily, with six beats to the line, 
the normal foot being anapsstic. Still greater ease is 
given by the fact that the stanzas vary in length, and 
frequently end with part of a line, the next stanza 
taking up the rest of the line and often completing the 



250 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES ' 

rhymed couplet. " Rabbi Ben Ezra " has a more 
complicated stanza, — two rhymed couplets of three feet 
each, iambic, separated by a six-foot line that rhymes 
with a last seven-foot line. ** Christmas-Eve " and 
"Easter-Day" have four beats to the line, with 
various arrangements of short syllables and rhymes, so 
that the effect of the verse is lively, and possibly not 
quite so dignified as the subject demands. What do 
you think ? Whatever lack there may be in the 
structure of the verse is, however, counteracted by the 
diction and style, which passes from the humorous 
description full of lifelikeness of the congregation in 
the little chapel to the chaste redcence and power in 
the presentation of the vision. 

If there are any differences in the internal structure 
of the verse, that is, in the varying of short syllables 
and rhymes to agree with the changes in mood, note 
them. << Easter-Day," Mr. Arthur Symons says, 
**like its predecessor, is written in lines of four 
beats each, but the general effect is totally dissimilar. 
Here the verse is reduced to its barest constituents ; 
every line is, syllabically as well as accentually, of 
equal length ; and the lines run in pairs, without one 
double rhyme throughout. The tone and contents of 
the two poems (though also in a sense derived from 
the same elements) are in similar contrast. ' Easter- 
Day,' despite a momentary touch or glimmer, here 
and there, of grave humour, is thoroughly serious in 
manner and continuously solemn in subject." These 
poems differentiate themselves from all the others in 
this group, through their imaginative and symbolical 
quality. ** Saul " toward the end touches the same 
sort of imaginadve ecstasy (show how), but David's 
vision does not reach the vivid objective presentation of 



EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 251 

those in the two later poems. There are many inter- 
esting allusions in the two poems, for explanation of 
which see Camberwell Broiu?ii?ig, Vol. IV., Notes, 
pp. 400, 404. Contrast the way in which they are 
brought in with their use in the other poems. 

A study of the effects of alliteration will be found 
interesting in connection with the rhymed group. In 
making comparisons notice that appreciation of nature 
is as much an attribute of David as it is of Caliban, 
but his appreciation smacks of pastoral rather than 
savage life, and includes human hfe in its vision, and 
furthermore is infused wdth the fervor of the joy of 
living instead of the fear of the joy of living. The 
chief ornaments of this poem are the lyrical outbursts 
in song of David. For opinions as to their truthful- 
ness to the time, see Camberwell Brow?u?igy Vol. IV., 
Notes, p. 376, Point out all references and figures of 
speech which add to the beauty of the diction. Com- 
pare the nature of the language used by ** Rabbi Ben 
Ezra." Does the nature of the references and illus- 
trations in this group of rhymed poems determine the 
tone of the poem as much as it does in the group of 
blank-verse poems ? 

Queries for Discussion. — In how many ways can 
you trace the influence of Shakespeare's Caliban on 
Browning' s ** Caliban " ? 

**Saul" has been considered by some critics to 
be the finest single poem of Browning's. Mr. 
Symons remarks: *' Indeed it seems to unite almost 
every poetic gift in consummate and perfect fusion : 
music, song, the beauty of nature, the joy of life, the 
glory and greatness of man, the might of love, human 
and divine : all these are set to an orchestral accom- 
paniment of magnificent continuous harmony, now 



252 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

hushed as the wind among the woods at evening, 
now strong and sonorous as the storm-wind battling 
with the mountain pine." Though the poem may- 
be worthy all this praise, do you feel that there are 
other poems in this group finer, because more absolutely 
original in treatment ? 

Do you think the artistic force of ** A Death in 
the Desert " somewhat weakened by the compli- 
cated series of speakers ? or do you think it an artistic 
device to place John in perspective, so surrounding 
him in mystery, at the same time that there is a 
direct line of connection with the present speaker ? 

Would not ** Bishop Blougram " preserve its artistic 
unity better if the poet had not added those explana- 
tory stanzas at the end ? 

Does it seem like an apology on the poet's part for 
having drawn the Bishop in such uncomplimentary 
colors, and an attempt to shift the blame upon 
Gigadibs, by insinuating that he was not worth a 
better argument ? If this were true, would it be 
better or worse for the Bishop ? 

From the study of these poems do you get an impres- 
sion of the power and variety of Browning's genius ? 



Page 
Text 


Note 


177 

I 

257 


317 
293 

332 


45 
49 


291 
293 


163 
214 
216 


353 
368 
368 



The Prelate 



Vol. 

The Monsignor in " Pippa Passes," iv. . . . i 

The Nuncio in **The Return of the Druses," v. iii 

Ogniben in '* A Soul's Tragedy," ii iii 

** The Bishop Orders his Tomb at St. Praxed's 

Church" V 

•'Bishop Blougram's Apology" v 

Abate Paul, Canon Girolamo, the Archbishop, 
Caponsacchi, and the Pope in *' The Ring and 

the Book," x vi 

<< The Pope and the Net" xii 

*'The Bean-Feast " xii 

Topic for Paper y Glassworks or Private Study. •=— 
Browning's Prelates : A Character Study. 

Hi?its : — Before bringing his first prelate on the 
stage in ** Pippa Passes," Browning lets us know from 
Pippa how highly he was thought of, and then from 
Bluphocks how lightly he was regarded. Moreover, 
Bluphocks not only casts doubt upon him, but impli- 
cates him in the plot against Pippa. Pippa' s words 
(Introduction, lines 62-68 and 181-186) reflect that 
class of pubhc opinion which takes the holiness of an 
exalted prelate for granted ; but those of Bluphocks 
(Part II. lines 329-370) represent public opinion no 
more trustworthy, — that of a class of sceptics as ready 
to distrust a priest because his profession is holiness as 
the pious are to assume him to be good because of it. 
Should either be accepted ? Does the poet give these 
two points of view to awaken curiosity and interest in 



254 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

an independent scrutiny of the character himself when 
he appears ? But notice that he makes Bluphocks give 
a clew to the plot which may be taken as a fact al- 
though it comes through a scoundrel. Does Blu- 
phocks rightly implicate the priest in it ? 

As the Bishop bows his attendants out, the extreme 
politeness and, especially, the humility of his saying 
that he chiefly desires life now that he may recom- 
pense them, seem a little dubious. Is he too conde- 
scending ? Does he mean it ? And the addition, 
spoken aside, ** Most I know something of already," 
may indicate a system of spying on them, and that 
he has such a conception of his duty to his office as 
Shakespeare makes Angelo have in ** Measure for 
Measure,'* — to ferret out evil and punish the sin- 
ner, instead of rescuing the sinned against. Or is this 
a hit at the Intendant ? Is the Monsignor an abste- 
mious man, or is there any reason to suspect him of 
forced asceticism ? (lines 4, 23— 25, 119— 121). Why 
do you think the Intendant is '* bashful " about taking 
the " dainties " ? (See also 1. 68.) Does he feel un- 
easy, and have his own slippery deeds made him so, 
or his fear of the Bishop's capacity in the same line? 
Maybe he has noticed the Sicilian's surprise that a 
repast has been prepared, and thought the remark was 
intended to forestall a fear that there was any intention 
to poison him. But is this likely at the date of the 
play ? (The references to Prince Metternich and 
Austrian tyranny permit an approximation of the date.) 
Is it a revelation of the Bishop's character that his 
talk flows so affably on, between his thrusts at the 
Intendant, in picturesque descriptions of midsummer 
heat at Messina, and in dissertations, a propos of Jules, 
on the prospects for a new school of art ? What do 



THE PRELATE 255 

you gather from the talk otherwise as to the Bishop's 
antecedents and character and his intentions toward sin 
and the particular sinner before him ? When the In- 
tendant, shrewdly suspecting that the Bishop is not 
averse to profiting by the crimes he means to make a 
virtue of detecting and punishing, checkmates him 
by saying that it has happened in this case, as in 
all the old stories, that the child was not killed, but is 
ready to produce (171 — 177), notice the effect on the 
Bishop. Does the Intendant's rejoinder betoken that 
his lordship was choleric and tried to strike him ? 
Does this justify the Intendant in thinking his guess 
right, that the Bishop is not anxious to be assured c£ 
the child's safety ? What is his reason for letting the 
Bishop know that Carlo of Cesena is in the secret too, 
and has been blackmailing him ? In which speech is 
the Monsignor's real feeling betrayed, where he cries, 
" Liar ! " or, ** I would you spoke truth for once " ? 
Does the Intendant judge rightly as to his secret de- 
sire to appear good without really being so, in his final 
proposition ? Does Pippa's song expose the Bishop's 
true aspiration toward righteousness ? Or does it act- 
ually v/arm into life a tendency to be as good as he 
appears, which was but latent before ? Notice Pippa's 
final remark upon the Bishop (lines 272—280). Does 
her insight throw the right light on his character .? 

In comparison with .this Bishop, does the Nuncio of 
**The Return of the Druses" show a greater or less 
insincerity in his professions of love for his sheep ? 
Is it due to his greater danger that he is so much 
keener-witted, or is his nature both stronger in fibre 
and more frankly material in its secret desires and in 
its assumption of mastery over the people, than that 
of the Monsignor ? Notice Djabal's previous knowl- 



256 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

edge of him as Luke of Stamboul (lines 166, 210), 
and what this implies. Also his purchase of the 
Prefectship (32—40), and his use of the dead Prefect's 
sunken treasure ship, containing the price he himself 
had brought him, into a means to win over the unini- 
tiated Druses by giving them to understand they were 
intended as the gift of the Church to them. His 
mind dwells on those bezants. Notice his idea of a 
miracle (184). But the situation was desperate, as 
his own account of it shows (20—30) ; and the mutter 
among the Orientals hemming him in — ** Tear him ! " 
brings out his powers of mind in defence against their 
merely physical advantage over him. When he finds 
how effective his bluff *' Ye dare not," etc., is, does 
he weaken or strengthen our admiration of his pluck 
by taking the opposite tack — ** Said I, refrain from 
tearing me? I pray ye tear me! Shall I," etc. 
Does his silence when new persons or new events 
come into calculation, and his instant seizure of any 
hint about them that may be turned to his advantage, 
reveal an unusual combination of powers, — caution 
and astuteness with alertness and adroitness ? Exem- 
plify this. 

Is there any sign in the Nuncio of the art-loving 
tastes of the Monsignor ? His utter worldliness, his 
hard-headedness about the supernatural, are his strong 
points. Notice that his last speech is the confident 
challenge to Djabal to exalt himself. This comes, too, 
after Anael's death, which has not shaken him for an 
instant. Does this distinguish him from the Mon- 
signor, again, whose half-and-half virtue is his weak 
point ? He is much less confidently worldly than 
the Nuncio, and is capable of being frightened emo- 
tionally, as it were, while a physical fright, fear for 



THE PRELATE 257 

his life, and concern for the loss of both bezants and 
bishopric are what wring the heart of the Nuncio. 

Ogniben is not put in a situation which brings out his 
own secret foibles, but in one which makes use of his 
characteristic combination of affability and shrewdness 
to bring out the secret foibles of Chiappino. He 
knows beforehand that the Prefect is not killed, and he 
has been informed, too, as to w^ho really dealt the 
blow, so he has to manage Chiappino, whose princi- 
ples he has reason to suspect, with reference to an- 
other man of worth, Luitolfo, whom he does not fear, 
and he acquits himself of his task, both with relation 
to them and to the Church he serves, with insight, 
tact, and intelligence. He consciously brings to light 
all Chiappino's lurking infidelity, as Pippa uncon- 
sciously wakens all the allegiance to good lying dor- 
mant in the Monsignor's pious intentions. Show 
how ably he does this. But, after all, does his success 
depend at bottom on Chiappino himself? Would 
Ogniben show to as good advantage if he had a sin- 
cere character to grapple with ? The quality in him 
that is not exalted, and which would be detected, one 
may guess, if he had to deal with a revolter vvhom he 
could not add to his list of '* three-and-twenty leaders 
of revolts," is his disbehef in disinterestedness. Would 
he not appear as much at a disadvantage as Braccio, 
for example, if he had a Luria to bring to justice ? He 
is unable to conceive of liberty as anything but a pretext 
for self-aggrandizement, and he is as sceptical about dis- 
interestedness as the Nuncio is about Druse miracles. 

The Bishop who builds his tomb at St. Praxed's 
Church agrees with the Monsignor of " Pippa Passes " 
in his artistic tastes; and the Nuncio is a boor, com- 
pared to him, in love of material advantage. His joy 
17 



258 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

in beauty is so thoroughly sensuous, so utterly un- 
aware of the existence of such a thing as inward beauty 
in art, that he is like a child beside his sophisticated 
fellow- prelates, and represents a stage of unconscious- 
ness of self so undeveloped that it can only be com- 
pared with that of the evangelical parish-priest in 
" The Inn Album " (Part IV. lines 240-415), who, 
although so opposite to him in any esthetic capacity as 
in any similarity of outward environment, is scarcely 
more crude in knowledge of himself. The arrested de- 
velopment of the uncultured evangelical English clergy- 
man of the present century and the unawakenedness 
of the cultured Italian prelate of the Renaissance are 
equally ugly in character, from a spiritual point of 
view ; although one may jusdy take more pleasure in 
the Italian than the Englishman, because he is a 
natural product of an early stage of European civiliza- 
tion, while the Englishman is an unnatural growth, 
thwarting the legitimate progress of modern life. 

There is, however, litde insincerity or doubleness 
of aim in either of them. They have the virtue of 
primitive types. The man whose moral possibilities are 
awakening can be more of a hypocrite or a potential 
villain than one who has not yet reached the transi- 
tional phase where choice begins to be consciously 
taken and villany or virtue may result. There is 
one token that the Bishop feels guilty. He hesitates 
over telling how to find the buried lump of lapis lazuli 
secredy saved when his church was on fire (lines 33- 
50) . Does this suggest the necessity for caution merely, 
or does his conscience trouble him a little ? Are there 
any other such signs of uneasiness t (3-9.) The 
mixture of Bible phrase with Pagan emblems some- 
times suggests not only that his mind naturally betrays 



THE PRELATE 259 

the Pagan taste belonging to an Italian, but also that 
he covers his greater delight in the latter with a pose 
in the professional line expected of him. 

The desire to get the better of a rival, to excite 
envy, and occupy a place of power and importance in 
public opinion, is the impulse that moves Bishop 
Blougram to make his apology as it moved the Bishop 
of St. Praxed's to make his dying requests. What 
other similarities of character are there between the 
two men ? (See Cambei well Brownings Vol. V., In- 
troduction, pp. xviii and xix.) In sophistication, 
brain-power, materialism, and adroitness. Bishop Blou- 
gram is a Nuncio raised to the highest power ; and 
in affability, fluency, and social gifts, as well as in 
his scepticism toward disinterestedness, he is a cooler 
hand than Ogniben. Nevertheless, in just the fact 
that Gigadibs's criticism of his sincerity makes him as 
desirous to subjugate him as the Bishop of St. Praxed's 
was to get the better of old Gandolf in his grave and 
torture him with envy, the poet lets us discern — 
through his uneasiness of conscience about this — the 
weak point in his character, and also the shifting of 
the m.oral ideals of the nineteenth century, which the 
Bishop vaguely feels, towards a genuine love of man 
and against such claims as his for personal power, 
luxury, and rank. 

Is Gigadibs the nonentity he is commonly supposed 
to be ? Or is he very important to the poem in the 
light he throws on its purport ? Notice that he is 
represented as being led to action of an unexpected 
kind by this talk. And how do you deem the fact 
should be interpreted, as a comment on the Bishop's 
argument and character, that, instead of sitting with 
Blougram "this many a year," as the Bishop thinks 



26o BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

he will, he does **not sit five minutes" (lines 1005— 
1014), being seized with a "sudden healthy vehe- 
mence " to put into practice in a new world a simpler 
way of life, in closer accord with the last chapter of 
St. John ? 

Does this imply that the Christianity the Bishop 
professes is opposed, in its exaltation of favored persons 
to material comfort and prominence, to the social ardor 
and ministry to others which was Christ's last bidding 
to his disciples in that chapter ? 

The Churchmen whose characters are more or less 
fully portrayed in " The Ring and the Book ' ' may 
be best seen, first, from the standpoint of the chief 
and wisest one of them, the Pope, Then the ac- 
counts given of them elsewhere in the poem from 
other points of view may be collected and compared 
with his ; especially those of Caponsacchi given by 
himself, in Part VI., and Pompilia, in Part VII., 
both of him and of the others. 

The Pope characterizes the Abate as a fox, "all 
craft but no violence;" the young Canon Girolamo, 
as the ** hybrid," neither fox nor wolf, ** neither 
craft nor violence wholly ; " the Archbishop as a knight 
enfeebled by the gold and silk of the Church's favor, 
who, instead of championing the victim, took part 
with the wolf against her. His judgment of them all 
is based upon his own conception of the shepherd's 
proper office being to feed the sheep, and disregard 
the lust and pride of life. From disheartenment over 
their moral failure he turns with cheer to Capon- 
sacchi's **use of soldiership, self-abnegation, freedom 
from all fear, loyalty." Is his view of all these 
Churchmen just ? Is his stern, unbiassed judgment 
against those he so grieves, for the sake of the Church, 



THE PRELATE 261 

especially to condemn, a high proof of his own disin- 
terestedness ? Notice, also, that he has to face some 
scandal against the Church he honors to defend 
Caponsacchi, and not to let off Guido. ** Religion's 
parasite" he calls him. Is his reprimand of Capon- 
sacchi a moral weakening on his part from the high 
stand he has taken ; or is it sincere and natural from 
his clerical point of view ? Notice, too, that he has 
no idea of the purity of love for a priest, but is again 
true to his clerical ideals in praising Caponsacchi for 
resisting love (11. 1 164-1 187). In what respects does 
he over-praise and under-praise Caponsacchi .? (See 
Camberwell Browning, Vol. V., Introductory Essay, 
p. XXX, and compare with Caponsacchi' s own ac- 
count of his action and motives.) 

Not only in his sentence of Guido is the Pope's 
fidelity to what he thinks right attested. He is above 
bias and seeks truth outside the pale of ecclesiasticism, 
reviewing the past and forecasting the future in quest 
of truth. Yet, despite his fears lest it was the world's 
enmity that gave the early Christians their spiritual 
insight and vigor, and that the world's approval of 
the Church as an established institution deadens the 
ardor of her sons for virtue and tends to make the 
politic and thrifty seem to them the only wisdom 
(11. 1821-1831); despite the suspicion that the natural 
man has it in him to exceed in virtue any *« warmth 
by law and hght by rule " (11. 15 27-1 5 50); despite 
his foreboding that in an age to come there may be 
a few able to reach an unauthoritative truth and 
" correct the portrait by the living face, man's God, 
by God's God in the mind of man;" despite 
all these undaunted adventurings of a brave mind, a 
pure and disinterested love of the trutn, the Pope does 



262 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

not for an instant question his own duty and preroga- 
tive as the head of the Church to smite with all his 
authority the wrong he sees (11. 19 50-1 9 54). 

In Browning's last book, **Asolando," companion 
sketches of two prelates appear, — one as wily and yet 
almost as naively hypocritical in his self-seeking as the 
Nuncio, and the other as true-hearted as the Pope of 
''The Ring and the Book." But is this Pope of "The 
Bean-Feast" as acute and subtle as Antonio Pignatelli r 
How do you derive from this short poem that he was 
simple-minded and lovable .? And from the other 
lightly written piece, how is it that you gather an 
impression of the hit being against the people who 
were disarmed from cavil at the fisherman's origin 
by his external humility, rather than against the 
humor-loving Pope who saw through them ? 

Queries for Discussio?i. — What effect would a song 
of Pippa's have to deter the Nuncio of*' The Return of 
the Druses " from a profitable tacit assent to a crime ? 

Was Browning true to nature in portraying in the Mon- 
signor a man who could be swayed by Pippa's song ? 

Would the Pope of " The Ring and the Book " 
approve of Bishop Blougram ? judged by this Pope's 
idea of the Church as the embodiment of the rule, 
that " Man is born nowise to content himself, but 
please God," which of these prelates would deserve 
his commendation ? 

Is this Pope alone enough to justify the priesthood 
for all the slurs its unworthy members cast upon it ? 
Or does he rather justify human nature, which can be 
so sound and genuine that neither hierarchy nor partisan- 
ship can bend it from the love of the truth ? 



Browning Study Programmes 

SECOND SERIES 
Single Poem Studies; "Paracelsus" 

Page 
Vol. Text Note 
"Paracelsus" i 35 308 

I. Topic for Papery Classwork, or Private Study. 
— The Ideal of Paracelsus, Proposed Methods of 
Attainment, and Festus's Criticism. (Part I.) (For 
hints upon this and following topics, see Notes as given 
above and Introduction to Vol. I.) 

Queries for Investigatiofi and Discussio?i. — In his 
relations w^ith his friends does Paracelsus show himself 
capable of great depths of affection ? 

Does the weakness of his ideal as he presents it to 
his friends consist in its insistence that truth is latent 
within the soul of man, needing only the discovery 
of proper outside stimuli to make it blossom forth ? — 
in his assumption that he of all men has been chosen 
by God to attain absolute knowledge ? — in his throw- 
ing over of all past wisdom as aids in his search ? — 
or in his determination to seek good for men while 
remaining aloof from them ? 

Is there any resemblance between the theories of 
Paracelsus and Herbert Sp^encer's exposition of life as 



264 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

the continuous adjustment of inner relations to outer 
relations ? (For sketch of the working of this principle 
in evolution, see John Fiske's ** Through Nature to 
God," chap, viii.) 

If it be admitted that Paracelsus had hit upon a 
right principle, that intuition (or inner relation) de- 
velops by means of a v^^ay being opened up from 
outside (the effect of external stimuli), then would the 
chief flaw in his ideal be that he claimed too great 
absoluteness for the knowledge when gained ? 

Has not this mistake been made by modern scien- 
tists who have confused knowledge of phenomena 
with knowledge of causes ? 

If his principle was right, what was there wrong 
about his method of investigation ? Was it that he 
sought to find direct analogies between soul and nature 
by means of arbitrary signs and symbols instead of by 
means of experimental experience ? 

Did Paracelsus show his good sense, however, in 
his objections to the wisdom of the sages, whom he 
rejected ? 

Does Festus do him justice ? Do his criticisms 
show him more friendly than penetrating ? 

Do you consider the ideal of Festus which Michal 
echoes — that one must receive appreciation and have 
love for one's work — the highest, or is there some- 
thing noble in the determination to do good and forego 
the reward of appreciation ? Is it best of all to do good 
though sympathy for one's efforts be lacking, yet to 
be conscious of the need of sympathy, and respond to 
it when it comes ? 

II. Topic for Paper y Ciassworky or Private Study. 
— Methods Found Wanting, and through Aprile a 
New Conception of Life Revealed. (Part II.) 



PARACELSUS 265 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — What 
various tendencies are at war with one another in the 
mood of Paracelsus as he appears at the house of the 
Greek conjurer ? 

Does he show any intuition at all of the true cause 
of his failure ? 

Does not this passage, up to line 280, seem to you 
a remarkable presentation of the character of a man 
with a proud and dauntless spirit, brought to bay at 
last, now catching at the hated conjuring methods in 
the hope of some respite, now struggling to keep his 
ideal pure and to retain faith in himself? In this 
terrible struggle of his spirit does he seem in danger of 
losing his mind ? If this were so, might the appear- 
ance of Aprile be explained as a hallucination ? 

Is the song heard outside meant to apply especially 
to Aprile, or to both Aprile and Paracelsus ? 

Do Aprile' s ideals of art show a democratic inclu- 
siveness ? Can art be made democratic without ceasing 
to be art ? (See Tolstoy on this point in *« What is 
Art ? ") Are Tolstoy's arguments biassed by the fact 
that in his democracy he tends to bring all intelligence 
to a universal plane, instead of recognizing the needs of 
various grades of intelligence ? 

Does Aprile mistake the nature of Paracelsus and 
his achievements by calling him a poet and his king ? 
Does he show at the end that he has discovered his 
mistake ? 

Was Aprile' s error not so much that he denied 
knowledge, but that he desired to encompass the 
infinite in his love instead of patiently touching it here 
and there through man's means? 

Is the statement made by Paracelsus, that each had 
failed through not recognizing each other's worth as 



266 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

typical of love and knowledge, the whole of the 
truth ? 

Does Paracelsus really understand the drift of Aprile's 
remark, ** Yes ; I see now. God is the perfect poet, 
who in His person acts his own creations " ? 

Aprile has been said to stand as a type of the Re- 
naissance. Did the Renaissance tend in the direction 
of greater democracy in art ? (See Symonds, Vernon 
Lee, Burckhardt, on the Renaissance.) Was not 
Paracelsus himself just as much a fruit of the 
Renaissance ? 

III. Topic for Paper, Classwork, or Private Study. 
— How Paracelsus Puts his New View of Life into 
Practice. (Part IIL) 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — Does 
Paracelsus show in this part that he had mistaken the 
drift of Aprile's lesson of Love ? 

Does he say anything to lead you to suppose that 
he confuses the idea of love with that of mere artistic 
appreciation ? 

Is he right in insisting on the integrity of his nature, 
which is that of a scientist, not of an artist ? 

Is his irritation at Festus uncalled for ? or are 
Festus's attempts to sympathize with him somewhat 
blundering ? 

Do you gather from the talk of Paracelsus in this 
part that he had any belief in magic, or that he some- 
times played upon people's creduHty by using the pre- 
vailing superstitions of the age ? 

In his attitude toward his pupils at Basel, does he 
show any signs of love toward them ? Just why does 
he desire to pass on his knowledge to them ? Is there 
anything to be said in defence of his pupils for turn- 
ing against him ? 



PARACELSUS 267 

Is he right when he says that only drastic measures 
will impress upon his listeners that he is a pioneer in 
new fields of knowledge ? 

In his description of his services to knowledge in 
this part, does he give a good idea of the real Paracel- 
sus ? (See Dr. Berdoe's article on ** Paracelsus the 
Reformer of Medicine," in his volume of Essays 
entitled " Browning's Message to his Time," or same 
in London Browning Society Papers.) 

IV. Topic for Papery Ciasswork, or Private Study. 
— Failure and its Effect upon his Mood and Actions. 
(Part IV. ) 

Queries for hwestigation and Discussion. — Is 
there any wounded vanity in the feeling of Paracelsus 
when he finds his disciples have turned against him ? 

Is his scorn and anger at their stupidity and jealousy 
justified ? 

Does he proceed upon his fresh quest of knowledge 
with any assurance of success ? 

Does he make any remarks in this act which em- 
phasize the fact that Aprile was mistaken in addressing 
him as a poet t 

Does he show a remarkable power of self-criticism ? 
Why does his knowledge of himself do him no 
good ? 

Does he take a step in advance when he decides 
that knowledge may be gained from emotion and 
experience as well as from observation ? Is this, do 
you think, what Aprile meant by loving infinitely ? 
For the attainment of universal sympathy is it 
necessary that one should go through all human 
experience t 

Do the remarks of Festus serve principally as a foil 
to bring out Paracelsus ? 



268 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Do the lyrics in this part fitly symbolize phases of 
Paracelsus' s mood ? 

V. Topic for Paper, Classwork, or Private Study. 
— Criticism of his Past Beliefs and Development of his 
Philosophy. (Part V.) 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — Do the 
opening remarks of Festus in this part have value prin- 
cipally as presenting all the details of the scene ? 

Is the mood of Paracelsus rather one of disappoint- 
ment and regret in his preliminary ravings on his 
death-bed than of scorn and bravado, as in the last 
scene ? 

What scenes of his past life seem to haunt him, and 
to which of them does he make especial reference ? 

Does he, in the course of the talk about himself 
here and in previous acts, give a good idea of the way 
in which the world regarded him ? 

What points are there in common between his 
final utterances on a life philosophy and the modern 
theories of evolution ? 

Does he carry the principles of evolution into the 
emotional and spiritual realms of life as well as the 
physical ? 

What does he declare to be the moving force in all 
this process of development, and what is the ideal 
toward which it tends ? 

Is Paracelsus in line with modern thought in his 
philosophy ? (For parallelisms in thought between 
Paracelsus and Herbert Spencer, see comparison of 
the poem with Spencer's ** Data of Ethics," in Poet- 
kre, Vol. I., p. 11 7, March, 1889. Further com- 
parisons may be drawn from Spencer's ** First 
Principles," John Fiske's *' Cosmic Philosophy," 
Joseph LeConte's ** Evolution and its Relation to 



PARACELSUS 269 

Religious Thought;" Henry Drummond's '* The 
Ascent of Man.") 

VI. Topic for Paper, Classwork, or Private Study. 
— The Historical Paracelsus and his Relation to his 
Age Compared with Browning's Portrayal of Him. 

Queries for hivestigation and Discussion. — Are the 
five scenes given by Browning in the life of Paracel- 
sus founded upon any actual incidents ? Browning's 
own account may be consulted for this, to which 
may be added the information that, according to Van 
Helmont's account, ** Tartari Historia," Paracelsus 
came to Constantinople in 1 5 2 1 and received there the 
Philosopher's Stone. In the knguage of Paracelsus, 
according to Hartmann, **The Philosopher's Stone " 
was an allegorical expression, meaning the principle of 
wisdom upon which the philosopher who has obtained 
it by practical experience may fully rely. 

How many of the actual events in the life of Para- 
celsus can you trace through the poem, and how 
does the poet present them ? (Franz Hartmann's 
"Life of Paracelsus" may be consulted; also the 
account in the ** Encyclopedia Britannica.") 

Does Browning speak truly when he says he had 
changed the facts of his life but little ? 

Is it very easy to see, however, that Browning 
added to his knowledge of the historical account of 
Paracelsus some knowledge of his work, which he 
used in developing the character of the man ? 

Did the real Paracelsus believe that there existed in 
all an inmost core and centre of truth ; and did he 
consider knowledge could only be found by such 
methods as those adopted by the poet's Paracelsus; 
and had he the same sort of faith in his great mission ? 

The following quotations from the works of Para- 



270 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

celsus cited by Hartmann throw light on this subject : 
" All numbers are multiples of one, all sciences con- 
verge to a common point, all wisdom comes out of 
one centre, and the number of wisdom is one. The 
light of wisdom radiates into the world, and mani- 
fests itself in various ways according to the substance 
in which it manifests itself. . . . We may grow into 
knowledge, but we cannot grow knowledge ourselves, 
because in ourselves is nothing but what has been depos- 
ited there by God. " ( " De Fundamento Sapientiae.' ' ) 
**It is a great truth which you should seriously con- 
sider, that there is nothing in heaven or upon the earth 
which does not also exist in man, and God who is in 
heaven exists also in man, and the two are but One." 
*' Whoever desires to be a practical philosopher ought 
to be able to indicate heaven and hell in the Microcosm, 
and to find everything in man which exists upon the 
earth ; so that the corresponding things of the one 
and the other appear to him as one, separated by 
nothing else but the form. He must be able to turn 
the exterior into the interior." ** It is the knowl- 
edge of the upper firmament that enables us to know 
the lower firmament in man, and which teaches in 
what manner the former continually acts upon and 
interrelates with the latter." '* The soul does not 
perceive the external or internal physical construction 
of herbs and roots, but it intuitively perceives their 
powers and virtues, and recognizes at once their 
signatumy ** The knowledge to which we are en- 
titled is not confined within the limits of our own 
country and does not run after us, but waits until we 
go in search of it. No one becomes a master of prac- 
tical experience in his own house, neither will he find 
a teacher of the secrets of nature in the corners of his 



PARACELSUS 271 

own room. . . . He who wants to study the book 
of nature must wander with his feet over its leaves. 
. . . Every part of the world represents a page in 
the book of nature, and all the pages together form 
the book that contains her great revelations." *' I 
know that the monarchy [of mind] will belong to me, 
that mine will be the honor." 

Is there anything among the writings of Paracelsus 
to justify the scorn of the conjurer he shows ; his de- 
sire to find the secret of making gold so that he might 
show of how litde importance he considered it ; and 
his several flings at magic ? 

Drawing upon Hartmann again, we may quote the 
following from Paracelsus : ** Magic and Sorcery are 
two entirely different things and there is as much dif- 
ference between them as there is between light and 
darkness, and between white and black. Magic is 
the greatest wisdom and the knowledge of supernat- 
ural powers." — «* To use wisdom, no external cere- 
monies and conjurations are required. The making 
of circles and the burning of incense are all tomfoolery 
and temptation, by which only evil spirits are at- 
tracted." **What shall I say to you about all your 
alchemical prescriptions, about all your retorts and 
bottles, crucibles, mortars, and glasses, of all your 
complicated processes of distilling, melting, cohibiting, 
coagulating, sublimating, precipitating and filtering, 
of all the tomfoolery for which you throw away your 
time and money ? " Hartmann says : " Although Par- 
acelsus asserts that it is possible to make gold and 
silver by chemical means, and that some persons have 
succeeded in making it, still he condemns such experi- 
ments as useless." (See, also, Camberwell Brownings 
Vol. I., Introduction.) 



272 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Is it possible that Browning confused magic with 
sorcery, and meant Paracelsus to make his flings 
against the latter ? 

Did Paracelsus, as Browning shows, discount the 
value of love in the first part of his life, and come to 
a realization of it afterwards ? 

On this point Dr. Berdoe says: ** The real Para- 
celsus, as we find him in his works, was full of love 
for humanity ; and it is much more probable that he 
learned his lesson while travelling, and mixing among 
the poor and wretched, and while a prisoner in Tar- 
tary, where he doubtless imbibed much Buddhist and 
occult lore from the philosophers of Samarcand, than 
that anything like the Constantinople drama was en- 
acted. Be this as it may, we have abundant evidence 
in the many extant works of Paracelsus that he was 
thoroughly imbued with the spirit and doctrines of the 
Eastern occultism, and was full of love for humanity. 
A quotation from his *De Fundamento Sapientiae' must 
suffice : ' He who foolishly believes is foolish ; with- 
out knowledge there can be no faith. God does not 
desire that we should remain in darkness and igno- 
rance. We should be all recipients of the Divine 
wisdom. We caq learn to know God only by 
becoming wise. To become like God we must 
become attracted to God, and the power that attracts 
us is love. Love to God will be kindled in our 
hearts by an ardent love for humanity ; and a love 
for humanity will be caused by a love to God.' " 

Possibly Browning developed the tale that Paracelsus 
received the "Philosopher's Stone" (wisdom) into 
the scene with Aprile. 

By love does Browning mean merely affectionate 
human relations, or an attitude of mind toward man 



PARACELSUS 273 

and the universe, which recognizes a beneficent pur- 
pose in the universe and therefore sympathizes with 
humanity in its struggles toward the light, its failures 
and its partial triumphs ? 

On this point Professor Royce says, in his paper 
'* The Problem of Paracelsus " ("Boston Browning 
Society Papers," p. 229) : ** Is it Nature, or is it 
Spirit ; is it the physical world, or the moral world ; 
is it the outer order of natural events, or is it the 
conscious life of mankind in their social, their moral, 
their emotional relations ; is it the world as the 
student of natural wonders, or the world as the lover 
of human life, the artist, the portrayer of passion, 
comprehends it ; in fine, is it the world of the 
' powers ' of nature or the world of the heart of man, 
that is the most likely and adequate to furnish facts 
capable of illustrating and embodying the divine 
purpose ? ' ' 

Is Aprile a vision or an actual mad poet ? How 
much in Part III. is a development from hints as to 
the character of Paracelsus, and how much is due to 
Browning's imaginative interpretation of the facts ? 
For example, do you find anything to indicate that 
Paracelsus had an overwhelming sense of failure in his 
work, or is that a necessary deduction made by the 
poet, on account of his vast pretensions to knowledge ? 

Browning evidently accepts the view held by the 
enemies of Paracelsus, that he led a dissipated life and 
was frequently intoxicated, developing this point of 
view in the fourth act. Is it Browning's intention 
to interpret the underlying causes of Paracelsus' s action, 
and so vindicate him while accepting the worst that 
could be said of him ? 

Does Paracelsus, in speaking of Michal's death, mean 



274 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

that her spirit has attained immortality, or that her 
spirit still lives on earth ? 

** The life of man is an astral effluvium or a 
balsamic impression, a heavenly and invisible iire, an 
enclosed essence or spirit. We have no better terms 
to describe it. The death of man is nothing else but 
the end of his daily labor, or taking away the ether of 
life, a disappearance of the vital balsam, an extinction 
of the natural light, a re-entering into the matrix of 
the mother. The natural man possesses the elements 
of the Earth, and the Earth is his mother, and he re- 
enters into her and loses his natural flesh ; but the 
real man will be re-born at the day of resurrection 
into another spiritual and glorified body." (*< De 
Natura Rerum.") 

What are the points in common between the philoso- 
phy of the real Paracelsus and Browning's Paracelsus, 
and how does the latter transcend the former ? 

Hartmann says that Paracelsus considered '* Man 
as such, the highest being in existence, because 
in him Nature has reached the culmination of her 
evolutionary efforts. In him are contained all the 
powers and all the substances that exist in the world, 
and he constitutes a world of his own. In him 
wisdom may become manifest, and the powers of his 
soul — good as well as evil — may be developed to 
an extent little dreamed of by our speculative philos- 
ophers. ' In him are contained all the Ccelestiay 
Terrestria, U/i^osa, and ^eria.' ^' Again Hartmann 
describes his philosophy : " The object of man's 
existence is to become perfectly happy, and the 
shortest way to become so is to be perfect and happy 
now, and not wait for a possibility to become so in a 
future state of existence. All may be happy, but 



PARACELSUS 275 

only the highest happiness is enduring, and permanent 
happiness can be obtained only by permanent good- 
ness. The highest a man can feel and think is his 
highest ideal, and the higher we rise in the scale of 
existence and the more our knowledge expands, the 
higher will be our ideal." (Other citations may be 
found in Hartmann's book to the same effect. This 
book is chiefly valuable for its quotations from the 
works of Paracelsus, and for its complete list of his 
works. Being written from the point of view of a 
modern theosophist, its opinions are probably some- 
what biassed, though they agree in the main with the 
ardclesin the ** Encyclopaedia Britannica.") 

Do the personalities of Festus and Michal take 
hold of the imagination ? 

Arthur Symons says: ** Festus, Michal's husband, 
the friend and adviser of Paracelsus, is a man of simple 
nature and thoughtful mind, cautious yet not cold, 
clear-sighted rather than far-seeing, yet not without 
enthusiasm ; perhaps a little narrow and common- 
place, as the prudent are apt to be. . . . Michal . . . 
is faint in outline and very quiet in presence, but though 
she scarcely speaks twenty lines, her face remains with 
us like a beautiful face seen once and never to be for- 
gotten. There is something already in her tentative 
delineation, of that piercing and overpowering tender- 
ness which glorifies the poet of Pompilia." 

Of these two, Mrs. Fanny Holy, in her '* Outline 
Study of Paracelsus," says : ** The character of Festus 
rivals that of Paracelsus in its strength and individuality. 
He embodies in a marvellous degree the ideal friend of 
humanity. Paracelsus would serve man and God, but 
Festus would serve God by loving man. . . . Michal, 
the wife of Festus, is Browning's first attempt to por- 



276 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

tray a woman. She is little more than a vision, hardly 
individualized, and looks out among the stronger per- 
sonalities of the poem Hke the shadowy face of an angel 
in some old painting. She is * Sweet Michal.' She 
weeps like a child when Aureole would leave them; 
she sings when all alone. 

" Michal carries but small part in the long talk be- 
tween the friends on that parting night, in the little 
garden at Wurtzburg. 

** It is significant that Aureole constantly addresses 
Michal, and puts words into her mouth as though 
divining her thoughts. It is Michal who first discerns 
that Aureole's faith and purpose are settled and not to 
be shaken. 

♦* She listens to Aureole's passionate declaration, that 
at times, he dreamed of having spent one life the sage's 
way. 

** She declares that Aureole is God's commissary, but 
warns him man should be very humble, while he is 
very proud. Then follows the final appeal of Aureole, 
to which they both listen, awed into submission to his 
will at last. 

**Both declare assent. The sun sinks behind Saint 
Saviour's, the eve deepens, till the great moon and 
the mottled owls warn them the parting hour is 
near." 

VII. Topic for Paper, Classzvork, or Private 
Study. — The Poem as a Work of Art. 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion, — Has 
this poem any of the characteristics of a true drama in 
the development of motive, the management of plot, 
the arrangement of situations, the portrayal of charac- 
ter ? If not, upon what grounds may it be claimed 
as an organic work of art } 



PARACELSUS 277 

Gustav Freytag, defining ** What is Dramatic ? ** 
says : ** An action, in itself, is not dramatic. Passionate 
feeling, in itself, is not dramatic. Not the presentation 
of a passion for itself, but of a passion which leads to 
action, is the business of dramatic art ; not the presenta- 
tion of an event for itself, but for its effect on a human 
soul is the dramatist's mission. The exposition of 
passionate emotions as such, is in the province of the 
lyric poet ; the depicting of thrilling events is the task 
of the epic poet." 

Mr. Fotheringham says of this poem : *' If 
drama of any sort be made, we must have persona 
vitally acting and reacting on each other, and 
together bringing the conclusion; and if the drama 
could never be * played,' never be spoken, it must 
still be evolved under its conditions in and through its 
dramatis personce. Now we are probably pretty well 
agreed that * Paracelsus ' does not fulfil these condi- 
tions or meet these tests. We have said that the per- 
sonce are not persons. Aprile is a type, even Festus. 
Paracelsus is vital and fairly defined, but the persons 
do not steadily act and react on each other to evolve 
the conclusions. Paracelsus alone 'acts.' It is 
true the others have some influence on him, largely 
passive, indirect ; but the drama of his career in its 
power and its weakness springs chiefly from within. 
The development is the development of the mind and 
character, of the genius of Paracelsus ; the others, even 
Festus, and Festus even in the last scene, -are quite 
subsidiary to the play of his mind and will." 

Upon this point Mr. Symons says : ** What is not 
a drama, though in dialogue, nor yet an epic, except 
in length, can scarcely be considered properly artistic 
in form." 



278 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Is there anything in the constitution of things which 
forbids a poet to invent a new form if he wishes to do 
so ? Why should the poem not be called a dramatic 
soul-epic ? dramatic, because expression is given direct 
by means of talk ; soul, to limit the range of expres- 
sion to spiritual instead of physical action ; epic, to 
limit the character interest to the hero ? 

Would the organic unity of such a poetic form 
depend upon the consistent connecting of the moods 
of the soul, and the entire subordination of other char- 
acters to the purposes of foils to the hero ? 

Would this agree with Browning's own conception 
of the poem ? In the preface to his first edition he 
wrote: ** Instead of having recourse to an external 
machinery of incidents to create and evolve the crisis 
I desire to produce, I have ventured to display 
somewhat minutely the mood itself in its rise and 
progress, and have suffered the agency by which it 
is influenced to be generally discernible in its effects 
alone, and subordinate throughout if not altogether 
excluded." 

Although the poem is primarily occupied with the 
moods of Paracelsus' s soul, in giving expression to 
these does he transmit, so to speak, a sort of back- 
ground of action and opinion which gives a vivid im- 
pression of his times, and many of the men who were 
contemporary with him ? 

What is the character of the beautiful nature ima- 
gery in this poem ? Is it noticeable for the attaching 
of active human qualities to nature, and are the allu- 
sions to nature introduced principally as descriptions 
of the scene or as comparisons and metaphors illustra- 
tive of the thought ? 

From what other sources are allusions drawn in 



PARACELSUS 279 

** Paracelsus," and how are they introduced, — as ref- 
erences, as comparisons, or in various ways ? 

When these more evident ornaments oi' style are all 
pointed out, is the diction as a whole remarkable for 
the nice choice of words, intensive in meaning and 
harmonious in sound ? 

What are the characteristics of the blank verse in 
this poem, — run-on lines, variety in pauses, and ar- 
rangement effect ? 

What artistic elements do you find in the fine 
lyrics which further adorn it ? 

Mr. Fotheringham writes, in his ** Studies of the 
Mind and Art of Browning " : ** The poem has grave 
faults and defects of structure, quality, and style. It 
is diffuse. The dramatic situation and motives are by 
no means clear. The characters or the types — for 
the figures are rather types than persons — are by no 
means distinct. The speeches are numerous and 
lengthy — too many and too long, often. And there 
is at times that ' excess ' of phrase and color which 
young romanticists mostly fall into." Do you con- 
sider this criticism shows lack of proper understanding 
and appreciation ? or do you prefer it to that of Mr. 
Symons, who comparing ** Paracelsus " with such a 
poem as Bailey's **Festus" and others of that brood, 
says: *' But it is distinguished from this prolific pro- 
geny not onlv by a finer and firmer imagination, a 
truer poetic richness, but by a moderation, a concrete- 
ness, a grip, which are certainly all its own. In few 
of Mr. Browning's poems are there so many individ- 
ual lines and single passages which we are so apt to 
pause on, to read again and again, for the mere enjoy- 
ment of their splendid sound and color. And this 
for a reason. The large and lofty character of Para- 



28o BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

celsus, the avoidance of much external detail, and the 
high tension at which thought and emotion are kept 
throughout, permit the poet to use his full resources 
of style and diction without producing an effect of 
unreality or extravagance." 



Single Poem Studies: " Sordello " 

Page 
Vol. Text Note 
" Sordello " i 93 309 

I, Topic for Papery Classworhy or Private Study. — 
The Poet's Dream Life. (As told in Book I. For 
hints on this and the following topics, see the general 
digest and the more detailed summaries of each book 
given in the Notes, also the Introduction, to the 
Camberwell Broivningy as cited above.) 

Queries for hivestigation and Discussion. — Is the 
account of Bordello's youth applicable to the child- 
hood of mankind in general, or merely to the boy- 
hood of a poet ? 

Miss A. Tolman Smith, in ''Browning's 'Bor- 
dello ': A Study in the Psychology of Childhood " 
{Poet-iorey Vol. VI., pp. 238-243, May, 1894), 
says : — 

"Rousseau expressed the wish that 'some discreet 
person would give us a treatise on the art of observing 
children '. . . Now . . . the study of children has 
become a passion. We have . . . laboratory inves- 
tigations, delicate tests of the sensorium, velocity of 
nerve currents, motor locaHzations . . . after the 
analytic method of Descartes. It is not the obser- 
vation which Rousseau intended . . . Soul is a 
synthesis. We really do not know it at all, unless we 



282 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

know it as an active totality. ... In [poets] the 
synthesis is most complete ; hence Soul as interpreted 
by them is the soul of our individual self-conscious- 
ness . . . The first book [of * Sordello'] is purely 
a study of childhood in the method of a poet who 
speaks not after the traditions of a school or a craft 
but by insight ... It is a poet's soul whose 
development we are watching, — a poet's soul re- 
vealed through a poet . . . And yet I fancy a 
poet's soul revealed through a poet differs from the 
common only by degrees of intensiveness." (See 
remainder of this article for further hints.) 

What sort of a poet is Sordello, and is there any- 
thing about his nature as a poet which makes his 
career of more importance to the world at large than 
that of any other kind of poet ? 

Referring to the two classes of poets described in 
the first book. Dr. C. C. Everett, in '*Sordello : The 
Hero as Poet " {Poet-lore y Vol. VIII., pp. 243-256, 
May, 1896), writes : — 

** A little singularly, while we have thus presented 
to us different classes of mind that seem to be anti- 
thetic to one another, Sordello appears to belong to 
them both. The description of the gentler class 
starts from the portraiture of Sordello ; and the 
description of the second class passes into a portraiture 
of the same." 

Is this a confusion in Browning's thought which 
causes an indefensible perplexity to the reader, or is it 
done with design, and is Dr. Everett's conjecture 
right, that '* perhaps one represents his earlier, and 
the other his somewhat later experience " ? 

Is the second class of poet treated by Browning as 
if, because he had the centrahzed consciousness which 



SORDELLO 283 

is the sign of dramatic capacity, he were the fruit of 
a higher human evolution, and the token of a higher 
stage of development for all mankind ? 

But in that case is it likely that he would be so 
dependent on the world and reality as Sordello dis- 
covers himself to be ? Is this a mistake of Brown- 
ing's ? Does the more highly evolved man grow 
more dependent on his fellows with development or 
less ? Is the artist, that is, the man whose will 
must wreak itself on expression and creation, the 
highest type of man, or the enfeebled and epileptic 
victim of his genius Lombroso diagnoses in his book 
on '*The Man of Genius" ? Does Lombroso dis- 
criminate between different classes of faculty in men 
of genius ? And does he show any perception of the 
difhculty involved, with reference to evolution, in as- 
suming what is normal and what abnormal ? 

How is the imaginative consciousness, the peculiar 
gift of the poet, able to further the advance of man- 
kind ? Because, through its energy, potency is 
liberated to set the consciousness of other men at work 
in their own way, promoting thus their development? 
May evolution proceed on the psychical plane of 
human life through psychical influences and habits ? 

II. Topic for Paper ^ Ciasszuork, or Private Study, 
— The Awakening to Social Life. (See Book II.) 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion, — Why 
should the poet exclaim *' Steal aside, and die, 
Sordello ; this is real, and this abjure," when he 
comes upon the crowd round the pavilion, and 
knows that Palma is there ? Is it because as poet he 
should devote himself to art, for art's sake, and for- 
swear any special pleasures for the sake of representing 
all ? 



284 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

What type of poet does Eglamor represent ? Is he 
more lovable than Sordello ? 

What class of critic does Browning mean to satirize 
in Naddo ? Why is Naddo not right in counselling 
Sordello to ** build on the human heart" ? And how 
far is Sordello justified in his counter claim that his 
own heart is human, and that he is equally bound to 
build on that ? Should a poet never rise higher than 
his audience ? Does future fame for the poet depend 
upon his work's suiting the emotions, thoughts, and 
ideals of the majority of men, or of the minority of 
men — those most evolved — who will indue time 
become the majority ? What relation to the theory 
of evolution in poetic art has the philosophy of art 
impHed in ** Sordello " ? 

Which of the factors of the social life now put in 
touch, at this phase of his career, with Sordello comes 
to have the strongest influence upon him, — competi- 
tion, fame, or criticism ? Do they affect him favorably 
or unfavorably ? Does it follow, because his love of 
supremacy and applause and his desire to forestall 
unfavorable criticism brought his personality and poetic 
genius out for display upon new planes of action, 
leading finally to disillusionment and self-disgust, 
that they were not serviceable to him ? Flow ? 
Why did he fail as a poet ? And what sort of failure 
is meant, — failure with respect to his own ideals, or 
his fame ? — his actual accomplishment, or possible 
accomplishment ? 

III. Tropic for Paper ^ Classzvork, or Private Study. 
— The Relapse toward Nature. (Book II. from line 
937 to end, and Book III.) 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — How 
do you account for the dispassionateness of nature 



SORDELLO 285 

having power to soothe Sordello so perfectly, yet 
having so brief an effect upon him ? What had the 
earthquake to do with it ? And why did it suggest 
death ? 

This period of calm in the midst of Sordello' s life 
may be compared with the scene in Goethe's " Faust " 
describing a like period of retreat and recuperation 
before the second part of Faust's career began. What 
important resemblance and differences do you note 
between them ? Bordello's sense of life, and of long- 
ing to taste its meaning more deeply, is at its height 
now ; nature and art alike seem properly now but 
tributary to real human life, while to Faust comes 
now a period when life is made tributary to art. 
Does his Gretchen make her appeal upon the physi- 
cal side of his nature, and is she only typically sugges- 
tive of other light and leading ? How is it with 
Sordello' s Palma ? 

What has Palma to do with Sordello' s entry upon 
the second and most important cycle of his career ? 
"Is she little more than a lay figure " in the poem, as 
Dr. Everett says, in ** Sordello as Man " i^Poet-lorCy 
Vol. VIII., pp. 313-325, June, 1896), and is ** her 
longing for some master-spirit to control her life rather 
sentimental than real " ? Or does Browning represent 
her as having the closest possible influence upon the 
social phase of Sordello's life ; and instead of depicting 
her merely as ** longing for some master-spirit to 
control her life," portray her as the initiator of action, 
so that she intelligently seeks for some *' out-soul " 
whom she can serve yet control, and through whom 
she can play an active part on the stage of Italian life, 
as Adelaide did through Ecelin? 

What is the significance of Browning's use in ** Sor- 



286 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

dello " of the word Will ? Is it a symbol for the in- 
ward energy and desire to initiate action, on which all 
individual and social progress rests ? And is Sordello 
important to the world of his day, because so richly 
dowered with the spiritual vitality that craves exercise, 
could he but be imbued with a sense of his unity 
with the social life, and make it serve his pleasure, not 
by subordinating it to his own self-expression, but by 
stimulating it through his art to action ? 

What does the digression (line 593 to close of 
Book III.) in which Browning speaks of his own 
work and his relation to it, amount to in brief? 
That Sordello was one of those poets whose concep- 
tion of life was larger than his art, and of his own 
personal life as larger than his art-life ? And that he. 
Browning, in telling his story, had it in view to 
celebrate the claims of the warped and undeveloped 
part of humanity to true hfe and happiness, along the 
same path of choice the most developed take ? 

Why is it that the ** worst " of the three classes of 
poets described (866—710), those who say they have 
seen, are frequently the most popular ? Because they 
are the easiest to follow, since they only have to be 
taken at their word ? Or because they belong to the 
earhest stage of development and find more men on 
their level ? Why is the second class, the descriptive 
poet, generally more appreciated than the makers-see, 
who, like Browning himself, fail to make some people 
see at all ? Is this perhaps because theirs is an art 
that requires its appreciators to help themselves ? 

In the digest of the Camberwell Brow?nngy Vol. II., 
p. 333, the first example of the kind of poet who 
finds disclosures in each face and writes so as to make 
this seen, is attributed to the third, the dramatic kind 



SORDELLO 287 

of poet ; the second example, of Plara's youth, etc., 
to the second, the pictorial poet ; and the third 
example, saying that Lucio is sad, to the merely sub- 
jective poet. The explanation given by other com- 
mentators, as to which example belongs to which 
poet, does not agree with this. Which is right ? 

Mrs. Orr says : " Corresponding instances follow ; " 
and then, in a note on this, " The third of these 
is very characteristic of the state of Bordello's, and 
therefore, at that moment, of his author's mind. The 
poet who makes others see is he who deals with ab- 
stractions : who makes the mood do duty for the man." 
(" Handbook to R. Browning's Works," sixth edition, 
by Mrs. Sutherland Orr, p. 42.) 

Is this exactly opposed to Browning's view of the 
makers-see ? 

Professor Alexander says : ** A poet of the highest 
class is represented as explaining that which an extract 
from a poet of the most superficial kind reveals to him — 
something very different from what its author intended. 
The imaginary auditor admits that the poet has pene- 
trated, through the superficial appearance, to the gist 
of the matter. Whereupon the poet demands that his 
auditor should trust his revelations in cases where the 
auditor cannot follow him." Professor Alexander here 
adds in a note : '* This seems to be the general sense ; 
but the present writer confesses his inability to follow 
in detail the speech put in the mouth of this poet of 
the Third Class." ('* Introduction to Browning," by 
W. J. Alexander, p. 161.) 

Are all three of these examples of the different kind 
of poetic work done by three classes of poets adduced 
by Browning, in order to prove to the im.aginary 
auditors whom he makes reply suitably after each such 



288 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

example his own ability as over-poet to understand 
poets and exhibit their relations to mankind, and his 
claim, therefore, to be trusted as a guide in the realm 
of consciousness he proposes to explore ? 

IV. Topic for Paper, Classwork, or Private Study. 
— The Re-entry upon the Social Stage as Champion 
of the People. (Book IV.) 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — Is the 
first result of Sordello's craving to know what real life 
is for its own sake, instead of for the sake of making use 
of it effectively in a poem, — likely to make him more 
sympathetic with the degraded masses of the people, or 
to disgust him with them .? 

What effect would it have on his art, — to make it 
less governed by the principle of selection, and less 
dominated by the choice of the beautiful in subject- 
matter } And if so, is this an argument for the poet 
not to know life as it is, but remain shut up in dreams 
about it ? What is the bearing of this second part of 
Sordello's career on the question to-day agitating liter- 
ary criticism as to realism and idealism in subject- 
matter, as to inclusiveness or exclusiveness in the 
writer's choice of what is fit to receive artistic treat- 
ment .? Where does Browning stand, — with the 
so-called classicist or the democrat in art .'' Is his 
view a reconciliation of the two ? 

What part has Taurello Salinguerra had in life ? 
Do you agree with Browning that the quality in which 
Taurello differed from Sordello — carelessness of prom- 
inence — shamed Sordello; or was Taurello's lack of 
personal ambition, which had made him play second in 
rank where he was first in ability, a serious defect in 
his character ? Had the death of his bride, Retrude, 
anything to do with it r 



SORDELLO 289 

Is Taurello, as Mr. W. M. Rossetti holds, the per- 
sonage in "Sordello" best reahzed as a creature of 
flesh and blood, acting the part of a man in a man- 
like spirit," and Sordello, in contrast, "rather a poor 
creature ' ' ? 

Were Bordello's aspirations, as they finally shaped 
themselves at the close of Book V., '* totally alien," 
as Mr. Rossetti again says, *' to the human thought of 
his time " .? 

V. Topic for Paper ^ Classzvorky or Private Study, 
— The Poet as Reconciler of Parties and Savior of 
the People. (Book V.) 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — What 
relation to democratic progress and to Bordello's 
ideals has the philosophy of history brought out in the 
syntheses, given at the beginning of Book V., of the 
successive stages of the life of the world ? 

What influence have the women of the poem had in 
moulding the events of the story and directing the 
trend of Italian politics t (See note on line 604, p. 
379, Vol. II., Camberwell Browning.) What had 
Adelaide to do with determining the life of Taurello 
and of Sordello } What effect had Palma, first, upon 
Taurello, in his hesitation whether to take the chief 
place himself or not ; then, upon Sordello in his recent 
midnight debate with her, at the watch-fire, on Italian 
politics (end of Book IV.), and now in constituting 
his personal temptation ? 

Mr. Nettleship says, in his chapter on " Sordello," 
in *' Robert Browning: Essays and Thoughts," p. 
118: "Adelaide's motive in saving him [Sordello] 
appears to have been to make him in due time head of 
the Ghibellins." Was Adelaide's motive exactly the 
reverse of this, to conceal his real birth, and prevent 
19 



290 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

him from becoming head of the Ghibellins ? He con- 
tinues ; " Her reason for her present concealment . . . 
was that she did not choose to let Ecelin know the 
truth until Sordello was old enough to take the station 
she intended for him ; and it has been suggested to me 
that her reason for keeping Taurello in ignorance was 
that she saw he would have no care to assert his real 
place if he thought he had no son to succeed him, and 
that he could thus be kept more securely in the service 
of Ecelin. I think this suggestion is valuable ; but 
that her real motive was a desire that Taurello's 
aggrandizement should be wrought by her hands alone." 
Is whoever made this suggestion to Mr. Nettleship 
much clearer-sighted than he was himself on this 
point ; and is his own idea about it directly gainsaid 
by Palma (Book V., lines 801-808), who says that 
Adelaide swore her, Palma, not to tell Ecelin, and gave 
her to understand that she, Adelaide, had feared to 
tell the vs^hole to Ecelin, lest he should be so bungling 
as to let it out and mar the fortunes of his own family ? 
(See digest of this passage, Caniberwell Browning, 
p. 345, also note on line 757, p. 389.) 

Does Browning's treatment of the relations of 
Palma with Sordello suggest that if the hero had been 
intellectually more open to her influence and insight, 
his decision as regards the accomplishment of his 
social aims would have been better ? 

VI. Topic for Paper, Classwork, or Private Study. 
— The Poet as Statesman. (^Book VI.) 

Queries for hivestigatio?i and Discussion. — Why 
did Sordello fail as statesman ? Because he lacked 
power to reconcile his ideal mission with the practi- 
cal urgencies of the moment, on the one side, and with 
the moral necessity, on the other side, to conquer his 



SORDELLO 291 

temptation to gratify his personal desires ? (See In- 
troduction, Vol. II., Camberwell Brow7nng.^ 

Or did he fail because as a poet he was bound to 
fail ? In the article before cited Miss A. Tolman 
Smith says: ** With Sordello these [self-] determi- 
nations are perpetually changing and ever fail to 
realize themselves as deeds. Herein the author 
maintains the unity of his purpose, which is to 
reveal the poet soul. For the true poet, the ideal // 
deed. What he prophesies in rapture other men 
perform. Thus is his mission fulfilled." 

But is this Browning's idea ? If so, wherein con- 
sisted the failure he speaks of? Is it inconsistent 
with the true poet's ideal that he should be to some 
degree practically concerned in the gradual realiza- 
tion of it } Does Browning hold that Sordello ought 
in this way to have failed ? Jf so, would he blame 
Dante not only for desiring action but for attempting 
to bring it about ? Does he not rather blame Sor- 
dello for not acting, and regret that Dante's would-be 
scheme of action came too late to be feasible ? 

But why, then, does he praise Eglamor in comparison 
with Sordello (Book VI. 797-818)? Is this in keeping 
or not with his idea (III, 864-930) of there being at 
present three classes of poets : the worst, those who 
say to the world that they have seen, — that is, the least 
powerful kind of subjective poet ; the better, those 
who say what they saw, — that is, the more powerful, 
pictorial kind of subjective poet ; the best, those who 
so see and speak that they make others see for them- 
selves, — that is, the objective or dramatic poet ; and, 
furthermore, of still another class of poet that may 
come to be in the future, the poet who shall ex- 
ceed in value to the world the man of action, — that is. 



292 



BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 



the poet who sees and himself uses what he sees 
(III. 916-927)? It is to these poets that Browning 
gives Sordello to be turned and tried. Why ? Is 
it not because they who shall be successful in this 
pushing of poetic insight and power into practical social 
action will know how to recognize Sordello as a 
pioneer in the same path, although he failed and fell 
by the wayside? Does his praise of Eglamor, by 
comparison, then, consist in commending him for 
accomplishing all that was in him to accomplish, each 
poet or person being properly to blame only for not 
fulfilling his faculty ; and does his blame of Sordello 
consist, then, in his failure to fulfil his higher capa- 
bilities of desire to direct and impel social action ? 

Is the question Sordello' s failure opens up this: 
May a poet-nature occupy with profit such a position 
with reference to the world as was open to Sordello ? 
that is, not of action, merely, which it is to be 
noticed was to be Salinguerra's office, but of the 
oversight, planning, and direction of action, — its 
will's will ? 

Will it be well for the world when behind the 
politician's hand works the synthetic planning of the 
poet's brain ? Has it not been well for the world 
whenever such idealizing statesmanship has to some 
degree made use of practical opportunity and method ? 
Do the affairs of the world — especially now, when 
national boundaries are breaking up and races are 
coalescing — cry out for men of large and loving ideals, 
not litde loveless utihties, to stand at the helm and 
serve the people's advance? 

Dean Church sums up the second portion of " Sor- 
dello " as " the opening of new thoughts and a new 
life to Sordello under the influence of Pal ma. She 



SORDELLO 293 

has taught him that Hfe needs a worthy object [and 
Dean Church might have added that his art needed 
Hfe] . He opens his eyes and sees in palpable proof 
the miseries of his fellows. But how to remedy it ? 
The great spell of the Middle Ages, the name of 
Rome, acts upon him. He learns its emptiness. 
Great factions divide society . . . with great and equal 
and monstrous crimes. He learns who he is. . . . 
Salinguerra would make him head of a power which 
should crush all the petty tyrannies and be able to defy 
Pope and Emperor. What is there to do ? Browning 
does not tell us." Is this fair to Browning,? How 
does Dean Church get the explanation he adds ? 
'* Sordello sees his mission but somehow fails to fulfil 
it ; resists the temptation that would divert him from 
it [leadership for its own sake, for love of power], 
resists it in its gross sense, and yet . . . because he 
missed something which * he wished should go to him, 
not he to it ' — therefore Dante justly finds him . . . 
among the greatly neghgent . . . the well-intentioned 
leaders of mankind " — those who see great things and 
want to do them, but do not see their way to build 
them up step by step. Does not Browning tell just 
this ? 

** Sordello as Browning presents him," says James 
Fotheringham, in ** Studies of the Mind and Art of 
Robert Browning," p. 163, *Ms your poetic idealist, 
dealing first with the things of art, and then called to 
deal with the things of life, and finding his ideal in 
the way of his handling either effectively." 

Is Sordello' s difficulty to some degree that of 
every mind which finds it impossible to satisfy its 
highest aims ? In which case, what is the worst, 
the better, and the best course .? — to follow the 



294 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

selfish needs, because the ideal is seen to be impracti- 
cable ? — to refrain from following these, because 
they are not ideal? — to recognize that the ideal is 
and must ever be, so far as man can see, impracti- 
cable, and yet to be attained, step by step, if while 
maintaining the personal life the aim be constantly to 
approach the ideal ? 

" In the final book, weighing the old dilemma 
between good and evil, — how much of evil ought to 
be removed, how much left to breed with good, in 
time, a better good, — he forswears the interference 
of mastery over man's Now, and chooses instead that 
spiritual power of sympathy and vision which shall 
help its utmost to advance man's Then." (*' The 
Purport of Browning's and Whitman's Democracy," 
Poet-lore, Vol. VII., pp. 556-566, Novembei, 
1895.) 

But in interfering with mastery over man's Now — 
to direct affairs under the imperfect conditions of the 
time yet with reference to his ideals — would he not 
have to accommodate actuality and ideals in doubtful 
ways .? And was it not better for him to keep his 
ideals unflawed by opportunist methods } Is Browning 
wrong, then, on a moral ground, for blaming his poet 
that he did not resolve to take up statesmanship t 

If in every-day life, however, one refused to accom- 
modate ideals and feasibility, one would come to a stand- 
still, or die, as Sordello did. Is there any choice in 
ways of realizing the ideal, with reference to the 
demands of the time ? Does Browning suggest the 
cl(;w } 

VII. Topic for Papery Classwork, or Private 
Study. The Historic Background. 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — Are 



BORDELLO 295 

the syntheses of successive historic epochs given in 
Book V. (124— 211) true and enlightening viev^^s over 
the main steps of European social evolution ? 

Is Browning's employment of the story of Cres- 
centius, in Book IV., to suggest to Sordello a better 
political method to make use of for the advancement 
of the people than either the Pope's or the Emperor's, 
a fanciful notion, or one full of genuine historical 
interest and appropriateness ? (For general suggestions, 
see Camberwell Brow7iingyNo\. II., Introduction, pp. 
XXV and xxvi ; for details, Milman's '* Latin Christian- 
ity " and other histories of the Middle Ages.) 

Is *' Sordello" true to history in a vital way, 
in reconstructing the life and ferment of the century 
which initiated the Renaissance movement ? 

Mr. George Willis Cooke, in ** The Poetic Limi- 
tations of * Sordello ' " (^Poet-lorey Vol. IV., pp. 612- 
617, December, 1892), considers that "Browning 
has not been true to history ; his facts are not the facts 
of the age he describes . . . He makes an age of 
feeling to be an age of metaphysical introspection and 
subjectivity ... an age of immense activity to be an 
age of metaphysical questioning . . . an age of senti- 
ment to be an age of intellectual seriousness. In fact, 
the age of Sordello w^as rarely serious, and did not give 
itself to earnest questioning of any kind." 

Can this indictment be rebutted on two counts : 
first, that Browning presents the age on the whole as 
one of feeling and sentiment and immense activity, and 
only presents with relation to it a rarely conscious 
poetic activity whose introspection is thus especially 
accounted for ; second, that Browning's presentation 
of Sordello himself as a pioneering nature is a rational 
rescue from semi-oblivion of just such lives as must 



296 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

have preceded Dante's life to make his possible. Is 
it justifiable to assert that this age did not give itself 
to earnest questioning of any kind ? For tell-tale 
evidence of the ** earnest questioning" preparing the 
way of civilization in the thirteenth century, notice the 
independent personal thought of Frederick II., Bor- 
dello's Emperor ; the religious theories upheld by the 
Paulicians, or St. Francis, or St. Elizabeth ; the facts that 
the main universities of ** Europe " were founded, and 
many scientific inventions broached, in the first half of 
the thirteenth century. ** The awakening of the in- 
dividual soul is not only the distinctive trait of the 
Renaissance," says Burckhardt, *'but its deep cause." 
Gebhart speaks of the ** profound idealism of the middle 
ages." Vernon Lee and Symonds, in common with 
other students of Italian history, recognize the original 
impulse of its movement in the early mediaeval revival 
which Browning has seized upon for " Sordello's " 
background. 

Mr. James Fotheringham takes the view that **the 
poem departs from history," in his *' Studies of the 
Mind and Art of Browning," pp. 144-146, but 
seems to have no authority other than his reading of 
Sismondi : *' As Sismondi says, the age was one of brill- 
iant chivalric virtues and atrocious crimes — an age of 
heroes and monsters among whom the figure of Sor- 
dello seems strange and out of place." Why } Does 
Browning fail to represent these atrocities vividly ? 
(See IV., 12-21,99-107,261-291, 342-348 ; v., 
769-776.) 

<*This kind of romance," continues Mr. Fother- 
ingham, " based on the suggestions rather than the 
facts of history, and attaching historic names to figures 
so different from the people who bore them, is open 



SORDELLO 297 

to criticism, and * pure invention ' would have advan- 
tages ; but we must take what has stimulated a poet's 
mind, and regard the poetic and spiritual results as our 
proper gain." 

Can it be held that Browning knew history more 
thoroughly than his critics ? 

The most instructed of his critics on the historical 
side, however. Dean Church, admits that ** Browning 
is a wide reader and draws his illustrative materials 
from sources locked and sealed to us outsiders." 
Again : " Sismondi and Milman will give us the 
history of the time, not quite the same as Browning's, 
but something like : the only thing that does not seem 
arbitrary is the geography." (Essay on Sordello in 
"Dante and Other Essays," by R. W. Church, pp. 
221-260.) 

Can it also be held thi^t there is a distinct historical 
value in such a poet's synthetic reconstruction of the 
life of an important period ? And that it is as such 
not only superior to history in vitality and picturesque- 
ness, but also superior to **pure inventions," how- 
ever poetic and spiritual, which do not draw their sus- 
tenance from actual life ? 

Is "Sordello" such a work? Although it be 
conceded to be embarrassed in its historic effectiveness 
by the soul-development of the hero, can it claim to 
be a prodigious exemplar of a poet's power to illumi- 
nate a recondite period ? 

VIII. Topic for Paper, Classworky or Private 
Study, — Dante's Influence on Browning's ** Sordello." 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — Is 
*' Sordello" virtually Browning's explanation of 
Dante ? — his attempt to account for him as a poetic 
and political phenomenon which, according to Brown- 



298 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

ing's evolutionary way of regarding all life, must have 
had a forerunner or some imperfect preceding type ? 

Dean Church, in the essay on **Sordello" already 
cited, w^rites : — 

** Who was Sordello, and what makes Browning 
choose him for a subject ? . . . He was plainly a dis- 
tinguished person in his time, a cunning craftsman in 
choice and use of language ; but, if this was all, his 
name would only rank with a number of others. . . . 
He may have been something more than a writer 
or speaker : he may have been a ruler, though that is 
doubtful. We know him because ... he was so 
much to Dante. Through three cantos he is the com- 
panion and guide . . . and we learn Dante's judgment 
on Sordello : he is more self-centred and in guise 
haughtier than even the rulers and judges in whose 
company he awaits cleansing ; and he is placed among 
those who had great opportunities and great thoughts 
— the men of great chances and great failures . . . The 
filling up of the story of Sordello is plainly suggested 
by the fact — we do not say the history, or the charac- 
ter, but the fact and existence of such a creation of 
human experience and human purpose as Dante's 
poem . . . Dante's course was shaped by two master in- 
fluences : for himself passionate and enduring love ; 
for Society, the enthusiasm for righteous government 
. . . The progress from love and from art to great 
public thoughts and wonderful achievements for man- 
kind which Dante accomphshed, Sordello failed in." 

Again, in his essay on Dante, Dean Church explains 
how the occasion of the unfolding of Dante's poetic 
gift *« was, what is not ordinarily held to be a source 
of poetical inspiration, — the political life. . . . The 
factions of Florence made Dante a great poet." 



SORDELLO 299 

What comparisons and contrasts with Dante does 
Sordello suggest? Is Sordello's devotion to Palma 
more secular than Dante's to Beatrice? 

Is Dante's Imperialism less progressive than Sor- 
dello's dream of democracy ? 

**The picture of Sordello's solitary boyhood . . . 
self-centred, self-pleasing, gradually unfolding his strong 
imaginative nature . . . suggests a contrast v^ith the 
city life of the boy described in the ' Vita Nuova,' ' ' 
says Dean Church. 

'* No set of men," writes Church (in his "Essay 
on Dante," p. 90), in pointing out how independent 
in his political ideas was the so-called Ghibellin poet, 
'* would have joined more heartily with all opponents, 
Guelf, Black, White, and Green, or even Boniface VIII., 
to keep out such an emperor as Dante imagined, than 
the Ghibellin nobles . . . Dante's was a dream in 
the Middle Ages, in divided Italy ... of a real and 
nadonal government based on justice and law. It was 
the dream of a real state.'" 

Is Palma Browning's comment on Beatrice's in- 
fluence over Dante ? 

See Camberwell Browimigy Vol. II., Introduction, 
pp. vii, viii, and xx-xxvii, for hints on Dante's influence 
on Sordello. For allusions in the poem to the women 
Dante mentions, and to the importance of the influence 
of those women of the Middle Ages who essayed to 
play a part in life by means of the ideals of service to 
them which chivalry supplied, see the same volume, 
pp. 372, 373, 379, 388, 390. Strange to say. Dean 
Church, whose studious knowledge of Dante would 
enable him at once, one would suppose, to turn to the 
passages in Dante to which Browning alludes when he 
writes of Palma and the "swooning sphere" (VI. 



300 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

993), and ** Fomalhaut " (V. 430), says he does 
not know what they refer to. 

IX. Topic for Papery Classworky or Private Study. 
— " Sordello " as a Work of Art. 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — Is 
"Sordello" an example of the hopelessness of a 
young and original poet's attempting to follow the 
admonishment of critics, since in deference to them he 
tried to make descriptive and analytic a creative 
design which the bent of his mind could but make 
dramatic at times, and the harder at other times for 
his narrative explanations ? (As in the digression of 
Book III., and in Book I. in which he evidently tries 
to supply the reader with author's preface, stage setting, 
and dra?natis persona y and general plan of the period 
and the part the hero is to play.) 

"Is it good (I ask, as one unversed in technical 
construction)," says Mr. Nettleship, ** that the 
history should be told as it is backwards ? The 
opening scene occurs just before Bordello's death ; and 
when we are already somewhat exhausted with the 
effort of understanding that opening scene, we are 
ruthlessly hurried back to the beginning of the real 
action of the story." 

How does this mode strike you after you have the 
clew that these opening lines are as it were picturesque 
stage directions ? Compare with George Eliot's 
** Daniel Deronda," which gives as prelude a scene 
in advance of the opening of the story as a foretaste of 
the heroine's quality. And after you understand that 
Sordello is to be a type of the class of poet who, 
like Browning, combines with the insight of the sub- 
jective poet the social instinct and creative faculty of 
the dramatic poet, does the digression in Book III. 
strike you as inappropriate ? 



SORDELLO 



301 



Mr. Mabie, in his Essay on Robert Browning in 
"Essays in Literary Criticism," p. 137, says *' *Sor- 
dello ' is distinctly defective as a work of art because 
the conception was evidently not mastered at the 
start ; and the undeniable confusion and obscurity 
of the poem are due largely to this offence against the 
primary law of art." 

How can it be proved that the conception was not 
mastered at the start? Mr. Mabie says ** evidently," 
and gives no further information. Does the poem 
supply any evidence that the poet had from the start 
a conception of what he meant to do ? And does 
that conception itself, because of its largeness, account 
for some of the difficulties of its readers ? 

Are the artistic defects of *'Sordello" in great 
measure the results of its peculiar quality as a creative 
work, — /. e, its design to show the development of 
such a poet as Sordello, who was not merely a 
poet but potentially a social leader, and to show this 
development with relation to a chaotic period which 
initiated a long-reaching political movement ? 

What relation to the design of '' Sordello" has 
the passage bringing in the idea of the Incarnation ? 
Should it be taken theologically and literally as Brown- 
ing's expression of Sordello' s need of Christ ? 

Dr. C. C. Everett, in the second of his papers on 
*' Sordello" {Poet-lore, Vol. VIIL, p. 320), says: 

** I am not sure that this last passage does not give 
what was, in the author's mind, the culmination and 
significance of the whole poem. It points to the 
divine-human revelation which might bring peace and 
guidance into the troubled and doubtful lives of men 
. . . Sordello had felt that the failure of his life had 
been caused by the lack of some overmastering and 



302 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

directing power. . . . However this may be, the 
apostrophe was introduced with marvellous rhetorical 
skill. It distracts our attention from Sordello at the 
very moment when his mental struggle reached its 
crisis." 

Is it better to take this passage symbolically? Is 
it Browning's explanation of what Sordello needed to 
enable him to unite the ideal with the practical for 
the service of mankind, made known to the reader 
through the use of the idea of the Incarnation as a 
symbol of a like union between the divine and the 
human for the service of mankind ? Love enabled the 
divine mediation, stooping to the flesh. Love was 
what Sordello needed to give his will the ardor and 
patience necessary to shape his theories toward practi- 
cal action for the betterment of the people crushed 
between rival cruelties. 

If this idea of the Incarnation is a symbol directly 
applicable here, is it an apostrophe not meant to dis- 
tract, but rather to attract attention to the crisis in 
Sordello' s mental struggle? 

Is it an artistic error to introduce dramatic and lyric 
insets in the structure of a poem professedly narrative ? 
Or do these give it vividness, color, and music, so 
that with all its difficulties it is sure to be found allur- 
ing? Notice that even in the digression in Book III. 
it does not suffice the poet to digress by one mouth, 
he holds dialogues with various imagined auditors and 
with his poetic mistress. Humanity, and takes her on 
his knee, and dries her eyes, too ; and he writes speci- 
men poems for three different poets. 

Do the couplet rhymes of the pentameter verse make 
one ** dizzy in whirling after them," as a speaker once 
complained in a London Browning Society discussion. 



SORDELLO 303 

and are they therefore to be condemned, or are they a 
proof of the young writer's vigor and fluency ? 

Is the imagery strikingly uncommon, beautiful, and 
at times bizarre ? Or is it too unusual and bizarre to 
be easily followed, and therefore to be condemned ? 

Is the artistic complexity of " Sordello," in general, 
so diverse as to prevent it from living long as a poetic 
creation ? Or is it likely to attract interest increasingly 
on account of its extraordinary richness ? 



Single Poem Studies: "Strafford" 

Page 
Vol. Text Note 
"Strafford" ii i 277 

I. Topic for Paper ^ Classwork, or Private Study. — 
England's Fate : Will Strafford Side with King or Peo- 
ple ? (Act I. For digests of this and following acts, 
and historical allusions throughout, see Camberwell 
Browning, as cited above ; for general criticism. Intro- 
duction, pp. vii, viii, xi-xviii.) 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — How 
does this act illustrate the political situation in England 
at the time of the opening of the play ? — through 
description, mainly, or through character-painting and 
incidental description ? Which method do you think 
more dramatic ? 

Is the view given in scene i. too much broken up 
to be intelligible, or the more vivid for being the sub- 
ject of dialogue ? Even Shakespeare sometimes explains 
his situations by putting a description of events pre- 
ceding the action in the mouth of one actor telHng 
another (see, in **The Tempest," Prospero's de- 
scription to Miranda ; in ** Cymbeline," the first gen- 
tleman's description of affairs to second gentleman) ; 
and in many other lesser but able dramatists it is often 
done. Is it a good way, because it is unmistakable ; 



STRAFFORD 



S'^S 



or is the way of doing this, indirectly, — through de- 
picting the impressions and apprehensions the situation 

has upon the characters who will initiate the action, 

better because more dramatic, even if it does require 
more alertness on the part of the auditors to gather up 
the clews ? If so, why is it more dramatic ? Be- 
cause more like life, more bound up with different 
human personalities and points of view ? 

Freytag (in his " Technique of the Drama," p. 19) 
points out, what is often mistakenly regarded in com- 
mon talk and criticism upon Browning and other 
modern dramatists, that *' action, in itself, is not 
dramatic. Passionate feeling in itself is not dramatic. 
The depicting of thrilling events is the task of the epic 
poet ; the exposition of passionate emotions, as such, 
is in the province of the lyric poet. Not the presen- 
tation of a passion for itself, but of a passion which 
leads to action, is the business of dramatic art ; not the 
presentadon of an event for itself, but for its effect on 
a human soul, is the dramatist's mission." 

Does " Strafford" indicate, from its start in Act I., 
that it is designed to show the action in its effect on 
human souls, and the progress of the action through 
the effect on it of changing human character ? For 
example, the first scene indicates, does it not, that the 
coming action involving England's fate depends upon 
the character of Wentworth with relation to the char- 
acters of Pym on the one side, and Charles on the 
other. Is it the effect of Pym's character, the pres- 
tige of his opinion and capability, on Hampden first, 
and, secondarily, on the others, which restrains them 
from taking the violent action they would otherwise 
be led to adopt because of the effect upon them of 
Wentworth' s character, and their apprehensions of 



3o6 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

what he can do for the King and against England ? Is 
this way of illustrating the action a necessary result of 
the actual facts and of modern conditions in general ? 
— Since if it were a case of conspiracy and assassina- 
tion of Wentworth, a deed would be the direct conse- 
quence of that first scene, but as it is a case of slower 
legal action and sentence (such as belonged to the fact, 
and, in general, must belong to such action under the 
conditions of modern civiHzation), action in character 
is the next step towards mitiating the chmax. 

Is it shallow criticism, then, to object to " Strafford " 
because, as its author himself says, it is a drama of 
"Action in Character rather than Character in 
Action " ? Or, if it is legitimate criticism, must the 
drama be confined to the portrayal of external deeds 
brought about exclusively by force or by external 
means of action ? And must the most characteristic 
activities of modern life taking place under modern 
conditions, therefore, be debarred from dramatic ren- 
dering ; and only past events of more heroic days, or 
the same kind of events, — nowadays in bad odor and 
called criminal rather than heroic, — be considered fit 
for the stage ? 

Is the same method of elucidating the action by 
showing character incubating the course it will take, 
followed in the second scene ? And does this come 
out through the relations of Lady Carlisle, Wentworth, 
Pym, and Charles, in that scene, as, in the first scene, 
through the relations of the Parliamentarians to Pym 
and Pym to Wentworth ? 

Is Hampden weak because he relied so much on 
Pym ? Is Pym weak because he put his trust in 
Wentworth, and would not undertake his task for 
England until he was assured Wentworth would not ? 



STRAFFORD 307 

Was it entirely love for their friends that so influenced 
them, or also love for England ? Is love a weakening 
emotion ? 

In Wentworth's case was it love for Charles that 
influenced him mainly, and did he choose him instead 
of the People ; or does the poet hint that his idea was 
to unify the people under Charles ? 

II. Topic for Paper, Classivorky or Private Study. — 
Strafford's Ministry : His Fate one with the King's. 
(Act II.) 

Queries for bivestigation and Discussion. — Does 
Strafford's pohcy change still further with this act 
after the scene with the King ? And is it a change 
that is a natural result of his character and his devo- 
tion to the King, in relation with the King's character ? 
Having attempted to guide the King, he finds that he 
must now make the best of the King's acts, whatever 
they are. . 

Is he justly called the ** great Apostate"? j 

Concerning his apostasy, Mr. H. D. Trail, in his | 
<* Life of Strafford," says, in brief: — 

** The most credible explanation [of his political 
change] is not the most creditable ; the most excusa- 
tory is the least convincing. In supporting the Par- 
liamentarians, in 1628, he was either sincere or not. 
If sincere, ( i ) he may have become convinced that 
his views were mistaken and his party dangerous ; 
(2) he may have yielded to Charles because fasci- 
nated by him, and espousing his cause in the hope to 
accommodate the legitimate claims of royal prerogative 
with the rightful liberties of the subject ; (3) he may 
have been bribed. Or, if never sincere, his action 
in 1628 was in order to show his value during 
preferment." 



3o8 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

In the Life of Strafford in Forster's '* Eminent 
British Statesmen " (which has been suspected to be 
in part Browning's, a collaboration confirmed by 
Elizabeth Barrett's remarks about the book in the 
*' Love Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth 
Barrett"), still another view of Wentworth's apostasy 
appears in a passage bearing every mark of having 
been written by Browning : " All Wentworth's 
movements appear to be perfecdy natural and in- 
telligible if his true character be kept in view. From 
the very intensity of the aristocratic principle within 
him, arose his hesitation in espousing at once the 
interests of the court. This, justly and carefully 
considered, will be found the solution of his re- 
luctant advances and still more reluctant retreats. 
The intervendon of a favorite [Buckingham] was 
hardly supportable by one whose ambition would 
be satisfied with nothing short of the dignity of be- 
coming * the King's mistress, to be cherished and 
courted by none but himself . . . Wentworth's con- 
duct, at the last, was forced upon him by circum- 
stances : but his energetic support of the Petition of 
Rights was only the completion of a series of hints, 
all of which had been more or less intelligible . . . 
Even in all these circumstances, when many steps 
were forced upon him, which his proud spirit but 
poorly submitted to, and wronged itself in submitdng 
to, it is yet possible to perceive a quality in his nature 
which was afterward more fully developed. . . . Li 
one word, what it is desired to impress upon the 
reader, before the delineation of Wentworth in his 
after-years, is this — that he was consistent to himself 
throughout. I have always considered that much 
good wrath is thrown away upon what is usually 



STRAFFORD 309 

called ' apostasy.* In the majority of cases, if the 
circumstances are thoroughly examined, it will be 
found that there has been * no such thing ' . . . 
those who carry their researches into the moral na- 
ture of mankind, cannot do better than impress upon 
their minds, at the outset, that in the regions they ex- 
plore, they are to expect no monsters . . . Let him 
[Wentworth] be judged sternly, but in no unphilo- 
sophic spirit. In turning from the bright band of 
patriot brothers to the solitary Strafford — * a star 
which dwelt apart ' — we have to contemplate no ex- 
tinguished splendour, razed and blotted from the book 
of life. Lustrous, indeed, as was the gathering of 
the lights in the political heaven of this great time, 
even that radiant cluster might have exulted in the 
accession of the 'comet beautiful and fierce,' which 
tarried awhile within its limits ere it * dashed athwart 
with train of flame.' But it was governed by other 
laws than were owned by its golden associates, and — 
impelled by a contrary yet no less irresistible force, 
than that which restrained them within their eternal 
orbits — it left them, never to ' float into that azure 
heaven again.' " 

Is this the impression the play presents ? And 
what other points of view contribute their light upon 
Strafford's character, and in what way do they rein- 
force the general picture ? What was Pym's opinion 
of him, and Lady Carlisle's ? — the younger Vane's, 
the elder Vane's, and that of the Court party ? 

What has Lady Carlisle to do with the action ? ) 
Has her character any importance in its action upon 
Strafford's and the King's? (See especially the sec- 
ond scene of this act, 217-221, and Lady Carlisle's 
aside, 225—228 ; also remarks on Lady Carlisle in 



3IO BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Camberwell Browfiing^ Vol. II., Introduction, pp. 
xii-xvii, and Notes, p. 292.) 

Is the climax of this act reached when Strafford 
throws himself into the breach to cover the King's 
confusion, as Pym and his friends enter and interrupt 
Strafford's reproaches? Or when Pym calls upon 
Strafford to keep tryst ? Is it a mistake to identify 
Vane with the menace of the future against Strafford, 
for which Pym stands at this point.? Or is this 
quick speech of Vane's in keeping every way first as 
irrepressible, if Vane was present, who spoke more- 
over for the party back of Pym, and, second, as 
contrasting with the impulsive character of Vane the 
slow and cautious but steadfast character of England's 
champion ? How do you interpret Pym's words 
( I 59-16 1 ) I Do they throw any light on the motive 
of his previous reluctance to move against Strafford 
till he was sure he did not mean England well ? 

III. Topic for Paper, Classwork, or Private Study. 
— The Impeachment: Pym for the People versus 
Strafford for the King. (Act III.) 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — What 
are the springs of the action in this act ? Do they 
all develop legitimately from the last ? Is it action 
in the character of Pym which now brings about the 
clish between the new political movement on whose 
behalf he acts, and Strafford, whom he singles out as 
leader for the King? What other factors have their 
share in the clash, and are they all motived dramati- 
cally in the same way, i. e.y do they proceed from 
human will into outward act, instead of the contrary } 
How is it with the Court party and the Queen ? 
Their enmity now became more active than before 
against Strafford. Is this underplotting of theirs a 



STRAFFORD 311 

needless complexity in the plot ; or a necessary ele- 
ment in it ? If so, why ? Does it unfold from the 
action in Strafford's character, in relation with the 
King's, since the more closely he binds himself to 
the King, the more he rouses the jealousy of the 
Court as well as the opposition of the Parliamenta- 
rians ? Could the King have taken counteraction at 
once against the threatened impeachment ? And if 
so, is his passivity at this point the root of the action ? 
What had the Queen to do with it ? 

All influences of character and human will in the 
play, as well as in its events — the reverses his army 
meets with the Scots — converge here against Straf- 
ford. Lady Carlisle's intervention with the Queen 
is in vain. How is it, then, that Strafford makes any 
stand at all, and what is to hinder the play from 
ending here ? Is it well managed that Strafford should 
seem to stem the tide alone ? Is this next step rooted 
in ** action in character" also ? Strafford's ambition, 
which seemed the strongest element in his aims at 
first, made him in Act I. desire to guide the King's 
course ; in Act II. his personal loyalty and love for the 
King become dominant and make him desire to re- 
trieve the King's blunders; despairing to guide, he is 
content to make the best of the King's way. Now, 
in Act III., the pressure of the crisis develops another 
phase of his character, its supreme ability and will- 
power. As he tells Lady Carlisle, in scene ii. i 50— 
162, '*he tried obedience thoroughly," and suffered 
the results when he ** took the King's wild plan ; " 
then he resolved to take his own lead henceforth. So, 
at this instant of greatest peril, Strafford gives the im- 
pression of greatest strength. 

Prof. S. R. Gardiner points out (Introduction to 



312 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Miss Rickey's ** Strafford," pp. ix-xiv) that Brown- 
ing brought out the moral qualities of his hero by 
strengthening ** whatever personal feeling may have 
entwined itself in the political attachment between 
Strafford and Charles . . . till it becomes the very basis 
of Strafford's life, the keynote of his character." It 
remained for the poet, adds Professor Gardiner, ** to 
impress his readers with Strafford's intellectual greatness. 
The historian who tries to do that will have much 
to say on his constitutional views and his Irish govern- 
ment, but a dramatist who tried to follow in such 
a path would only make himself ridiculous. Mr. 
Browning understood the force of the remark of the 
Greek philosopher, that Homer makes us realize 
Helen's beauty most, by speaking of the impression 
which it made upon the old men who looked on her. 
Mr. Browning brings out Strafford's greatness by 
showing the impression which he made on Pym and 
Lady Carlisle." 

True and penetrating as this is, is it all that Brown- 
ing does to bring home to his auditors a sense of 
Strafford's ability ? Do the impressions of his charac- 
ter here spoken of belong to the earlier periods of the 
play, and refer rather more to Pym's clinging belief in 
his disinterestedness, and to Lady Carlisle's conviction, 
almost fear of his loyalty, than to the high opinion 
they have of his power ? The fear his enemies have 
of him. Vane and Rudyard on the one side, and his 
Court rivals on the other, testify more especially to 
his intellectual power, do they not ? What does this 
act do to bring these impressions to a climax, and 
make Strafford seem most formidable when most alone 
and most threatened ? 

Is it a mistake to create a hero not dominated by 



STRAFFORD 313 

a single unchanging purpose ? And having shown 
him as passing through successive phases of attitude 
towards Charles and his own career, till he seems 
supreme, what dramatic purpose is served by making 
his downfall at the close of the third act so abject ? Is 
his accusation that the King has trapped him incon- 
sistent with his devotion? Why from the impulse 
to suicide does he change to submission ? 

Is the scene at cross purposes between Lady Carlisle 
and Strafford — when she is talking about his impeach- 
ment, and he is talking about that of his enemies — 
unnecessarily blind ? Is it artificial or natural ? 

Is it a stage slip to put an attractive woman 
in so unpleasant a position as she holds? Or is 
Professor Gardiner right in showing the dramatic 
purpose of this when he says that what Browning 
needs *Ms her admiration of Strafford, not Strafford's 
admiration of her. He takes care to show that she 
was not, as vulgar rumour supposed, Strafford's mis- 
tress. The impression of Strafford's greatness is brought 
more completely home to the spectator or the reader, 
because of the effect which it produces upon one 
who has given her heart without return." (As to 
Strafford's own testimony to Lady Carlisle in her 
relations with him, see quotation, Camberwell Brown- 
vig. Vol. II., close of note on II. 3, p. 293.) 

IV. Topic for Paper, Classwork, or Private Study. 
— The Trial : The Issue Trembles in the Balance. 
(Act IV.) 

Queries for Investigatio?i and Discussio7i. — Is it 
consistent in Hollis as a Parliamentarian and, so, 
against the prerogative of the King, to be so sarcastic 
about the King's non-intervention on Strafford's 
behalf? Or is his view in the first scene of Act IV. 



314 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

one which rates the King as low as he would any 
other man who lets another suffer in his stead ? But 
is not a king excusable for expecting such loyalty and 
accepting it ? Is not humanity at large more to blame 
than the King for nursing in him the idea that his life 
transcends all other lives ? (See Camberwell Brown- 
ingy Vol. II., Introduction, p. xvii.) 

Is Society as guilty under repubhcan as under 
monarchical government of asserting its right that 
individuals should be its scapegoats? 

Is Lady Carlisle a true royalist ? Does Browning do 
well to make her revolt against all her antecedents and 
bringing-up in this scene? (See her aside, lines 1 16- 
121.) 

What is Browning's object in representing the trial 
by anteroom scenes, bustle, and messengers to and fro, 
and broken description of what happens inside the great 
Hall, instead of presenting Westminster Hall itself? 

Is the formal pomp of such scenes on the stage apt 
to look theatrically stiif and hollow to the modern eye ? 
And is it appropriate with the design of the play that 
the trial scene is conducted as it is, as suggested in the 
introduction (^Camberwell Brownings Vol. II., p. 
xviii) ? Or is here an opportunity lost for enriching 
the play with an imposing spectacle ? But even from 
the spectacular point of view was it better not to spoil 
with a repetition the spectacle of the House of Lords 
in full conclave suddenly presented at the close of the 
third act, as the doors open wide, and Strafford kneels ? 
Is this brief glimpse of the Hall and the judges who 
are to hear the case, and whom Strafford then recog- 
nizes as symbolic of England, the more effective for 
its briefness ? Above all, is it better in this place than 
it could be in a fourth act ? For it is to be remem- 



STRAFFORD 315 

bered, of course, that this act following the third, which 
properly exhibits the climax, presents the downward 
movement, about to culminate in the fifth act, as 
hovering between the hero's fall or rescue. 

Has Browning overburdened the chances for Straf- 
ford's rescue by doubling his opportunities for escape, 
first opening the possibility of bringing up the army to 
force his deliverance, and then the second possibihty 
of the charges falling through because of Strafford's 
able refutation ? Or has he made the most skilful use 
of the actual facts in the case (see Notes, Camberwell 
Browning) y and so as to show incidentally, also, in the 
strongest hght the characters of the King and Strafford ; 
and the dominance of Pym over the whole action as 
well as over Strafford's single-handed, almost successful 
deliverance of himself? What dramatic advantage is 
there in mailing Vane, Rudyard, Fiennes, all turn 
against Pym and Hampden in demurring against the 
Bill of Attainder ? Is it to isolate Pym as the para- 
mount man, again, on his side ; just as Strafford is 
isolated on the other side, by making him return the 
King's scheme and stand in solitary strength against 
his destiny ? 

*' The most difficult part of the drama," Freytag 
reminds his readers ("Technique of the Drama," p. 
133) "is the sequence of scenes in the downward move- 
ment . . . specially in powerful plays, in which the 
heroes are the directing force, do these dangers enter 
most. Up to the chmax, the interest has been firmly 
fixed in the direction in which the chief characters are 
moving. ... A pause ensues. Suspense must now 
be excited in what is new. For this new forces, perhaps 
nev/ roles must be introduced . . . On account of this 
there is already danger in distraction and tne breaking 



3i6 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

up of scenic effects. And yet, it must be added, the 
hostility of the counter party toward the hero cannot 
always be easily concentrated in one person nor in 
one situation ; sometimes it is necessary to show how 
frequently, now and again, it beats upon the soul of 
the hero ; and in this way in contrast with the unity 
and firm advance of the first half of the play, the 
second may be ruptured, in many parts, restless ; this 
is particularly the case with historical subjects, where 
it is most difficult to compose the counter-party of a 
few characters only. And yet the return demands a 
strong bringing out and intensifying of the scenic effects, 
on account of the satisfaction already accorded the 
hearer, and on account of the greater significance of 
the struggle. Therefore the first law for the construc- 
tion ... is that the number of persons be limited as 
much as possible, and that the effects be comprised in 
great scenes. All the art of technique, all the power 
of invention, are necessary to insure here an advance in 
interest . . . Only great strokes, great effects. Even 
the episodes must have a certain significance, a certain 
energy." 

In the light of these remarks on fourth-act con- 
struction, admittedly one of the fine points in dra- 
maturgy, what do you think of the way in which 
Browning has effected a gradual isolation of Strafford 
on the one side and Pym on the other ? Notice that 
he has done this despite the new forces introduced 
which might have deterred or complicated the action. 
How has he woven, moreover, into the closer identifi- 
cation of Pym and Strafford with the opposing policies 
they represent, an increasing significance ? In what 
does this significance consist? And where does it 
come out the strongest .'' 



STRAFFORD 317 

The King's scheme to bring up the army was, 
historically, the turning-point in Strafford's destiny. 
(See note 88, p. 303, Camberwell Brozunifig.) Is 
it such that it could be made use of on the stage as well 
as that which Browning substituted for it ; and after all, 
if it could be made use of, would it take the place of 
the prior inner history of the relation of the King to 
the Bill of Attainder and Strafford's execution, as well 
as scene iii. does ? 

** Twice in the course of a week [April, 1641] 
Pym was admitted to the King," records Gardiner in 
his History. ** What passed between them we have 
no means of knowing." 

The last of these interviews Browning has imagined 
for us, and in it he has motived the catastrophe of 
*' Strafford" which ensues in the last act. Is Pym's 
grimness as the embodiment of England's will but made 
the more awful for the personal tenderness of his 
warning to the King, '* as man to man," and the 
desperation of Charles's reply (69—83) ? Is it strange 
or natural that Pym should be ready to save the King 
at such cost ? 

After this boldly significant scene, is Lady Carlisle's 
entrance and speech a futility, a weakness, or a 
spiritual relief? Does she understand ? Is her intui- 
tion as perfect as ever ? 

V. Topic for Paper, Ciasswork, or Private Stud'^. — 
Pym Acts for England : Strafford Dies for the King. 
(Act V.) 

Queries for bwestigation a?id Discussion?. — Why is 
the first scene of this act again with Lady Carlisle ? 
Is it to explain what was left hanging at the close of 
Act IV. ? Should it have been letl: so ? Why ? Is 
it merely a trick to turn the auditor's interest anew 



31 8 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

and unnecessarily to the act whose catastrophe is 
certain ? What reasons underlie it ? Is it desirable, 
aesthetically, that the gentle and the compassionate 
and the noble should weave some charm about the 
coming tragedy ? And what value, from the point of 
view of character, has the representation of all this in 
Lady Carlisle's person ? 

Freytag (p. 136) reminds the playwright that 
**it is hazardous to hasten to the end without inter- 
ruption. Just at the time when the weight of an evil 
destiny has long burdened the hero, for whom the 
active sympathy of the audience is hoping relief, 
although rational consideration makes the inherent 
necessity of his destruction very evident, — in such a 
case, it is an old unpretentious device, to give the 
audience for a few moments a prospect of relief . . . 
the dying Edmund must revoke the command to kill 
Lear ; Father Lorenzo may still enter before the 
moment when Romeo kills himself ; . . . Macbeth is 
still invulnerable from any man born of woman even 
when Birnam Wood is approaching. . . . Yet it re- 
quires a fine sensibility to make good use of this force. 
It must not be insignificant or it will not have the 
desired effect ; it must be made to grow out of the 
action and out of the characters ; it must not come 
out so prominently that it essentially changes the 
relative position of the parties. Above the rising 
possibility, the spectator must always perceive the 
downward compelling force of what has preceded." 

Does this scene fulfil Freytag' s requirements judi- 
ciously } 

*' The last act gathers to a focus all the sunny 
threads of human interest that irradiate the play. 
Lady Carlisle's affection plans Strafford's escape from 



STRAFFORD 319 

the Tower, while he sits in prison with his children 
about him, for a breathing-space at peace, in a happy 
island of childish song and prattle." (*' Dramatic 
Motive in Browning's * Strafford,' " Poet-lore, Vol. 
v., pp. 515-526, October, 1893.) 

Are these two children lifelike ? Do they differ 
in character ? Is the scene overwrought in its pathet- 
icalness, or the right foil for the coming scaffold scene t 

In introducing the King in the guise of Hollis's 
cloaked attendant, has the dramatist made Royalty 
needlessly weak or more poignantly pitiable t Does 
Strafford guess who he is, before he is made known } 
Is the scene needlessly prolonged, or is it worked up 
to give the more effectively Strafford's last act of 
generous loyalty, — to bless the King ? Has Brown- 
ing overwrought the figure of Strafford here with 
exaggerated nobility ? (See Camberwell Browning, 
Vol. II., Note 138, p. 307.) Or is his refusal to 
attempt escape lest it would stain his children, but his 
agreement to sacrifice their honor for his King's safety, 
a stroke too much of the willing sacrifice } Is Brown- 
ing ethically right in portraying such a man so 
attractively ? 

Why is Pym less attractive ? Is he not equally 
disinterested and devoted ? Is the tragically heroic 
or the successfully heroic, in general, more attractive ? 

Should Pym's speech be shortened here, as some 
persons have held ? Is Strafford's foreboding of 
their meeting a superstitious or a natural one ? 

Should the last dialogue between Pym and Strafford 
have been given without historical warrant for its 
having taken place ? What part does it play in the 
design of the drama as a whole ? Whether Pym and 
Strafford ever said a word about the future possibilities 



320 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

of Pym's again acting for England and Charles being 
beheaded this time, were such facts not implied in 
their present relation ? 

Is ** Strafford " undramatic because its interest is 
political ? 

** The interest of politics is mainly indirect. Straf- 
ford is impeached, not merely because he is hated, or 
because he has done evil things, but because he is 
expected to do more evil things," writes Professor 
Gardiner. ** Such possibilities of future evil, vv^hich 
the historian is bound to consider, are, however, 
essentially undramatic. The poet can at most only 
avail himself of them as a background for the scenes in 
which the characters or the passions of his personages 
are developed. Still less can he bring upon the stage 
personages who discuss the bearing and meaning of 
acts of Parliament, as Pym and Strafford did in real 
life. . . . From beginning to the end of the play the 
personal relations between the actors are exaggerated 
at the expense of the political." 

But is it not truer to say that the political relations 
are those that have been exaggerated, and that the 
proper proportions of the two have been restored to 
their right dimensions and relationship ? In taking this 
way to meet the difficulties of his subject, which Pro- 
fessor Gardiner of course approves in the poet, has the 
way been taken not merely to meet the technical and 
literary difficulties, but to give back to the political 
and historical conditions and their outcome, as we 
have them drily recorded, the primary source of their 
existence ? Whether actually just as presented in 
Browning's play or not, life and the personal relations 
of real characters influencing events were originally 
behind all such social movements. 



STRAFFORD 32I 

**Such movements are, after all, not impersonal 
but personal " (article before cited, " Dramatic Motive 
in Browning's 'Strafford,'" p. 517). ** They are 
the complex issue of many human wills. Personality, 
then, really holds sway over the ' possibilities of the 
future,' as it does over the private course of every 
single action in the struggle. The poet's use, there- 
fore, in this play, of these * possibilities of the 
future ' is not abstract and historical, but living and 
dramatic." 

Why then, if so originally motived in life and so 
represented in the play, are they not admirably suited 
for dramatic material .? 

Is the idea that they are not, a literary prejudice ? 



21 



Single Poem Studies: " Pippa Passes" 

Page 
Vol. Text Note 
''Pippa Passes" i 177 317 

I, Topic for Paper, Classworky or Private Study. — 
Dramatic Motive and its Movement in **Pippa Passes." 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — The 
dramatic motive of " Pippa Passes " is the conflict of 
unconscious Good with Evil. The Good in the person 
of Pippa appears first upon the scene. How are 
her relations with Evil foreshadowed in the first 
scene.? Interpreted in the light of her goodness, how 
do the various people upon whose lives she is to 
have so great an influence appear to her .'' 

The first evil she comes in contact with is that 
of a terrible crime already accomplished. Has she 
any sort of external relation with either of the parties 
to this crime ? 

Is Pippa's influence upon Sebald altogether for 
good .'' (See opinion expressed in Introduction to 
Vol. I., Camberwell Browning.') Does she have 
any direct influence on Ottima ? or is Ottima only 
afl^ected through Sebald } Is the instantaneous eff^ect 
of Pippa on Sebald probably due to the fact that he 
had already begun to repent his deed ? 

Ottima being stronger than Sebald in sacrificing all 
moral considerations to her love, is she also stronger 
in her repentance t 



PIPPA PASSES 323 

Why do you suppose the wicked students who 
were plotting against Jules were not affected when 
Pippa passed singing? 

The evil Pippa next comes in contact with is not 
that of the actors in a crime, but of the dupes in a 
crime. Does the influence of her song then consist 
in its arousing Jules to a higher ideal of life than he 
had ever before conceived of? Does it have any 
effect on Phene, or is she, too, influenced only by 
Jules ? Would Jules so easily have been affected by 
Pippa' s song if he had not already loved Phene, and 
been ready to take a view of the situation which 
would save her ? 

Up to this point has there been any indication 
that evil influences were at work against Pippa ? 
What comes out about this in the talk of Bluphocks 
and the policemen ? Why is it that Pippa' s song 
does not effect any change of heart in the villain 
Bluphocks ? 

In the case of Luigi, there is no crime for which 
repentance is necessary, no higher ideal to be aroused, 
only a purpose which has wavered through temptation, 
to be strengthened. Does Pippa' s song have any 
effect upon Luigi' s mother? 

In the scene with the street-girls, how does the 
plot thicken about Pippa ? 

Finally, in the scene with the Monsignor, the 
evil influences about Pippa culminate. In this do we 
get the first hint as to who she really is and why evil 
has been plotted against her ? In this case her influ- 
ence is exerted to prevent a crime, and that crime is 
against herself. 

Tracing the movement all through, at which points 
does her influence attain its greatest power, and at 



324 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

which points its least ? Is it harder to prevent a crime, 
as she did in the case of the Monsignor, or to cause 
repentance, as in the case of Sebald ? Is it harder to 
strengthen a wavering purpose, as she did in the case of 
Luigi, or to arouse a new ideal, as in the case of Jules ? 

Was the crime contemplated against herself the 
climax of the evils with which she came in contact, 
or only the climax in relation to herself? 

Can the climaxes and denouement in this drama be 
compared with the conventional conduct of a drama ? 
According to the accepted rules of drama, the first 
act should strike the keynote of the action, which 
Is unfolded in the second act, while in the third there 
is a clash of the different elements of the action making 
a climax ; in the fourth the elements of the action 
are quieter, but slowly gather strength for the final 
climax and denouement in the fifth act. 

May each episode up to the last one be said to 
iiave its own minor dramatic motive, which does not 
come in contact with the main dramatic motive except 
at the crucial moment of Pippa's passing ? 

In the scene preliminary to the episode of Luigi 
and his mother, although the plot begins to thicken 
about Pippa, it is kept perfectly distinct, is it not, from 
the following episode, with which she has the same 
connection as in the preceding- ones ? 

Is the last scene where Pippa returns to her room 
in the nature of an epilogue, or is it a needed part of 
the action to bring the chief actor in the drama prom- 
inently forward again, and, furthermore, to emphasize 
the fact of her isolation, and unconsciousness of the 
part she has been playing in the dramas of Asolo and 
the drama of her own life ? 

In making her influence felt more in some cases 



PIPPA PASSES 325 

than in others and not felt at all in some, do you 
suppose Browning means to indicate that the seed 
of goodness must fall upon ground that is ready to 
receive it, else it will be of no avail ? 

Do you think the words of Pippa's songs would 
have had as much of an effect, if purity and goodness 
had not breathed through Pippa's voice ? 

While this drama does not have the interplay of 
characters, and the complexities of plot usual to most 
dramas, do you not find it presents a very vivid and 
realistic picture of life in a town, just because of the 
isolation of the diiferent groups from each other, and 
Pippa's isolation from all ? 

Slight as each episode is, does not each one imply 
possibilities of a complete phase of existence, — first, a 
rich plebeian class, with its selfishness leading to 
crime ; next, an artist class with its jealousies leading 
to revenge ; third, a noble class with its high motives 
leading to patriotism ; fourth, a pampered religious class 
with its greed leading to crime ? 

Are all these pictures true to the Italy of that time ? 
(For hints, see Thayer's *^The Dawn of ItaHan 
Independence;" Cesaresco's *' The Liberation of 
Italy.") 

Has the poem any other basis in reality than is given 
it by its geographical and historical atmospheres ? 

Of its inception Mrs. Orr tells that Browning <Mvas 
walking alone in a wood near Dulvvich when the 
image flashed upon him of some one walking thus 
alone through life ; one apparently too obscure to 
leave a trace of his or her passage, yet exercising 
a lasting though unconscious influence at every step of 
it ; and the image shaped itself into the little silk- 
winder of Asolo." 



326 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

II. Topic for Paper i Classwork, or Private Study. — 
Character Groups. 

Queries for Investigatiofi a?id Discussion. — Does 
Browning mean to portray in Pippa an ordinary child, 
or a child of unusual artistic ability, as well as of 
a natural aspiration toward goodness and an unquestion- 
ing faith in God's love? 

Is her goodness that of innocence, or does she with 
full knowledge prefer goodness to badness ? 

Pippa has been criticised as being too developed in 
her reasoning, her observation, her choice of language, 
and the style of her songs. Mr. Edmund Clarence 
Stedman declares that she *' talks hke a Paracelsus in 
pantalettes." 

When you come to analyze these points, do you 
find her philosophy so very complex, her observa- 
tion extend beyond the range 0I her daily life, her 
language introducing any images or references beyond 
the realm of her experience } 

Upon this point Mrs. Isabel Francis Bellows, in an 
article on ** Pippa Passes" {^Poet-lore y Vol. VI., p. 
133, March, 1894), says: *' Pippa is the nearest, t 
think, to the Shakespearian woman, in the simplicity 
of her soul and the directness of her aims, but her 
holiday pleasures are purely and consciously intellec- 
tual ; she does look before and after, and she does at 
times speak pure Browning. Admitting this, we are 
not, however, compelled to admit that she is a Para- 
celsus in pantalettes ; her thoughts are not at all the 
thoughts of Paracelsus, and like Shakespeare's Perdita, 
Pippa is of a noble race. Pippa's thoughts do not, per- 
haps, transcend her breeding more than those of Perdita; 
and the two high-born, low-bred maidens have much 
in common, in their love of nature and flowers, their 



PIPPA PASSES 327 

bright innocence and gayety, and their trustful cour- 
age and faith. A special characteristic of Pippa is 
her great purity, which carries her unscathed through 
all the dangers and snares that beset her path. It 
is not the cow-like innocence of Eve, for Pippa 
possesses a knowledge of good and evil . . . She 
recognizes the relations between Ottima and Sebald, 
and criticises the holy Monsignor' s air of pride with 
a kind of broad tolerance that would be unusual in 
a young girl, if it were not that she is possessed of the 
wisdom drawn from the self-denial and austerity of 
her life." (See also opinion expressed in Introduc- 
tion to Vol. I., Camberwell Brownifig. For a hint as 
to her age, see scene with Monsignor.) 

Which has the more intense and the more sincere 
nature, Sebald or Ottima } 

Is Sebald so upset by his deed that for the time 
being he is almost out of his mind t 

Which of the following opinions do you feel to be 
the most just.? 

Mr. Symons's, — "The representation of Ottima 
and Sebald, the Italian and the German, is a singularly 
acute study of the Italian and the German races. 
Sebald, in a sudden access of brutal rage, has killed 
the old doting husband, but his conscience, too feeble 
to stay his hand before, is awake to torture him after 
the deed. But Ottima is steadfast in evil, with the 
Italian conscienceless resoluteness. She can no more 
feel either fear or remorse than Clytemnestra." 

Mr. Fotheringham's, — ** Sin is horrible, and the 
strong, just, divine order rules, calm and mighty. 
Sebald kills himself in his remorse, and Ottima shows 
the nobler side of passion in possible self-sacrifice." 

Professor Walker's (Greater Victorian Poets), — 



328 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

" In more respects than one this grand sketch chal- 
lenges comparison with the play of 'Macbeth'. . . 
Browning agrees with Shakespeare in representing the 
woman as less remorseful after the crime than the 
man . . . Lady Macbeth for a great ambition and 
Ottima for a great love determine upon a crime. 
The whole being of each is absorbed in the one idea. 
There is no other way but crime to the end, or none 
which headlong impatience will consider. The end 
they have determined upon they must have, and they 
accept the means to it. Not that they do not feel 
the crime : Lady Macbeth' s sleep-walking scene 
proves how deeply she felt it. But while her mind 
retains its balance she resolutely turns her face away 
from the crime, and in the case of Ottima there is 
never a hint that she wishes the past undone . . . 
Ottima loves Sebald better for the crime, she justifies 
it, she is quite unmoved by the song of Pippa. What 
does stir her is not the crime, but the sense to which 
she soon awakes that Sebald's love is gone, . . . 
Sebald' s whole nature is not immersed in the crime : 
it has only stained, not drenched his mind. Nor does 
he, like Ottima, find in his passion the full satis- 
faction of his entire being." 

(See also opinion expressed in Introduction to 
Vol. I., Camberwell Browning,^ 

Does Phene convince you of the innate purity of 
her soul in spite of the life she had been forced to 
lead .? 

Does the action of Jules seem to be almost too 
exalted to be possible, or is it just what one would 
expect of any just and high-minded man? 

Mary R. Baldwin, writing in Poet-lore on Jules 
and Du Maurier's ^' Little Billee " (Vol. IX., p. 575, 



PIPPA PASSES 329 

Oct.-Dec. 1 897) says: ''The Jules of ' Pippa Passes' 
— who finds his Psyche baffling his best efforts toward 
expression, always eluding the most skilful strokes of 
his chisel, and who, by virtue of his high ideals and 
unbending purpose to reach them and his refusal to 
debase his thought of womanhood, has directed 
toward himself the hatred of his fellow artists, be- 
cause their aims are low — becomes in Browning's 
hands a masterpiece whose awful experience of defeat 
is made his opportunity. Phene, the model, offered 
by the vicious leader among Jules' s enemies for the 
purpose of insulting his standards and entrapping him 
into a degrading marriage, also with the hope of ruin- 
ing him in his career as an artist, suddenly, under 
the influence of his nature, feels within her the flutter 
of her soul. The sensitive spirit of the artist springs 
to the recognition of the idea of an imprisoned Psyche 
appealing to him for release, and his whole self is 
filled with a longing to free it. He will break all the 
statues to which he has given long days and months 
of labor, and surrender himself to the divine impulse 
of trying to develop a human soul, living apart, with 
nothing to vitiate his purest and deepest impressions 
of art." 

From Luigi's conversation do you get the impres- 
sion that he was an impulsive and enthusiastic young 
man, with a great love of nature and the beautiful 
things of life ? 

Does the proposed murder of the King seem a 
crime, as he views it ? 

Do you get the impression that his mother is really 
arguing with him as to the merits of his proposed 
action, or that, her mind already made up against it, 
she is trying tactfully to draw him away from it with- 



330 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

out rousing his opposition by decided opposition on 
her part ? 

Does she do it so cleverly that if it had not been 
for Pippa's song she might have succeeded in dissuad- 
ing Luigi ? 

Was the Intendant not justified in thinking that the 
Monsignor would fall an easy prey to his propo- 
sition, considering the sort of proposition the Mon- 
signor had just made to him ? 

Of the array of villains in this play which appears 
to you to be the worst one ? 

Among the slighter groups of characters which two 
show signs of regeneration ? 

The only woman in the play besides Pippa who 
exerts any influence is Phene ; is that because men are 
more likely to be influenced by the presence of good- 
ness than by intellectual persuasion such as that used 
by Ottima and Luigi's mother ? 

III. Topic for Paper, Classzvork, or Private Study. 
— Artistic Effects. 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — Do the 
irregularities in the verse used by Pippa suit well with 
her childlikeness and her changes of mood, sometimes 
gay, sometimes grave .? 

Intensity and rapidity are the qualities of the scene 
between Sebald and Ottima ; how is this accomplislied .? 

Is there a calm sense of joyousness expressed in the 
talk of Jules before Pippa sings t Is the ardst soul 
revealed in all his references and allusions ? 

Is there any change in the style after Pippa sings t 

With Luigi and his mother we seem to get the im- 
pression of a suppressed calm before a heart-rending 
calamity. How is this produced } By his seeming 
indifference to her, and her emotional restraint t 



PIPPA PASSES 331 

Do these effects of style come out partly through 
the language used and partly in the management of the 
metre ? 

Do the several lapses into prose add to the artistic 
contrasts, and bear out still further the suiting of style 
to the characters ? 

Of the lyrics in the poem can all be said to have a 
distinctive charm based upon different qualities of 
thought and mood and style ? 

Does the poem Phene repeats have also its charm as 
a dramatically expressed mood of fiendishness ? 

Of this play Mr. Symons says : " It is Mr. Brown- 
ing's most perfect work. As a whole, he has never 
written anything to equal it in artistic symmetry ; 
while a single scene — that between Ottima and 
Sebald — reaches the highest level of tragic utterance 
which he has ever attained." 

Does this opinion show more appreciation of the 
possibilities in new forms of art than the following by 
Professor Walker ? — ** The repetition of the device, 
and the externality of the relation between Pippa and 
the other characters stamp the work as a phantasy, 
and deprive it of all right to compete, as a whole, 
with the great triumphs of art ; though, as a detached 
passage, the one scene of Ottima and Sebald will bear 
comparison with any." 



Single Poem Studies : " King Victor 
AND King Charles" 

Page 
Vol. Text Note 
" King Victor and King Charles " .... 1^37 3^7 

Topic for Paper, Classwork, or Private Study. — 
Motive and Interplay of Character. 

Questions for bwestigation and Discussion. — Might 
the motive of this play be described as the influence 
of a deep filial love and loyalty to the King upon 
character ? 

Has the play any plot interest ? 

Does the interest depend chiefly upon the situations 
growing out of mental misunderstandings betvi^een the 
characters ? 

The play opens w^ith a conversation between 
Charles and Polyxena in which he indulges in remi- 
niscences of his past Hfe and complaints of the life they 
are now forced to lead. Upon what historical facts is 
this conversation based, and how has Browning en- 
larged upon them ? (For hints on this and other his- 
torical points, see Camberwell Browning, Vol. I., 
Notes, pp. 329-331 fol.) 

What preliminary impressions as to the characteris- 
tics of Charles and Polyxena, and their relations to 
each other, do you get from this conversation ? 



KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES 333 

In the scene between D'Ormea, Charles, and Poly- 
xena which follows, is D'Ormea already trying to be- 
friend Charles, or is he thinking solely of protecting 
himself from the odium that will fall upon him for 
Victor's deeds if Victor abdicates ? 

Is Charles's misunderstanding of D'Ormea and his 
wrong conclusions as to the King's scheme due to his 
stupidity, to his morbid depreciation of himself, or to 
the fact that his mind was prepossessed with the idea 
that D'Ormea would give him counsel only with the 
intention of harming him ? 

Does Charles, in spite of his own fears of his father's 
designs, show irritation at any one's else suspicion of 
him ? 

Does Polyxena show greater intelligence than 
Charles in doubting that Charles's conclusions as to 
his father's purposes are right ? 

Part II. opens with a soliloquy by Victor, continu- 
ing with a conversation between Victor and D'Ormea 
preparatory to the scene of the abdication ; what in- 
formation as to the state of affairs and as to D'Ormea's 
history comes out, and how much of it is based upon 
fact ? 

Does Victor show himself absolutely selfish and 
callous ? 

Does D'Ormea speak the truth when he tells 
Charles he has pleaded wholly in his interest? Or 
did he, in speaking for himself, do by the way a ser- 
vice to Charles ? 

How do Charles and Victor misunderstand each 
other in the subsequent conversation ? 

Is it because Charles has his mind set upon the idea 
that Victor and his ministers have been laying plots to 
make him resign his inheritance himself, that he is 



334 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

finally so completely taken in by Victor when Victor 
insists upon his accepting the crown ? 

In the succeeding scene between D'Ormea and 
Victor, is Victor right in supposing that D'Ormea is 
trying to make him reconsider his action in abdicating, 
by showing him that his schemes will not work, — • 
that he will get the blame any way, and that he will 
not be able to return as he hopes to ? 

Do you think that Victor wavers a moment when 
he hears the shouts for King Charles ? 

Polyxena, having had her suspicions aroused as to a 
plot, is not so easily pacified as Charles. Do her 
remarks and the questions she puts to Victor show 
that she is on the right track ? Charles's revulsion of 
feeling in favor of his father is so great that he accepts 
D'Ormea as his minister without a word, and turns 
from Polyxena on account of her suspicion. Is either 
of them penetrating enough to see the true drift of 
D'Ormea' s remarks ? 

Is it inconsistent in Polyxena to try to dissuade 
Charles in the first place from resigning his heirship, 
and now to try to make the King take his crown 
again? (See opinion expressed in Introduction, Cam- 
berwell Browningy Vol. I.) 

In Part I., Second Year, is it made perfectly clear 
that D'Ormea is truly desirous of serving Charles and 
Polyxena ? 

Is D'Ormea' s sincerity proved by the fact that he 
sticks to his purpose of trying to protect Charles from 
his father, although Polyxena is unfriendly to him 
because she thinks him in league with Victor, and 
Charles is indignant at him for casting suspicion on 
Victor ? 

Does Charles really feel so sure of his father's 



KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES 335 

integrity, or is it his own fear that Victor will not 
prove true, that makes him turn against even Polvxena 
in his anxiety to save his father's honor? 

When no room is left for him to doubt any longer 
the intentions of Victor, and he tries to mislead 
Polyxena and D'Ormea as to these intentions, does he 
believe himself to have succeeded, or does he show 
by the irritation of his action that he knows they know 
the truth ? 

Does the poet succeed in this part in making us 
feel some sympathy for Victor, by representing him 
as a man whose powers are breaking down, and who 
feels the need in his old age of the pomp and circum- 
stance of rule he had been used to ? Or is this atti- 
tude of mind mere simulation on Victor's part, his 
real stand being represented in his choleric outbreak 
against growing democratic principles in government ? 

In the last part, what final ruse does Charles in- 
dulge in to show his dislike of D'Ormea because of 
the latter' s knowledge as to his father ? 

At the same time that he gives D'Ormea the im- 
pression that he believes the reports about his father 
false, and that he (D'Ormea) will not be able to 
prove his charges, he yet authorizes the arrest, because 
he knows the charges against his father are true. By 
this he accomplishes first the satisfaction of not ac- 
knowledging to D'Ormea his indebtedness, second the 
'satisfaction of having his father completely in his power 
to punish, and then giving him what he asks for. 

Is not this a very strong dramatic situation, but 
does it not show weakness on Charles's part ? 

Should he not have preferred the good of his 
people above the mere preserving of a filial attitude ? 
What does Polyxena think ? 



336 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Is loyalty to an unworthy object which to be 
maintained leads to injustice to others a virtue ? 

Which character is the most sincere and straight- 
forward all through ? Which is the least sincere and 
works only for his own ends?' Which, because of an 
ideal, has his nature warped toward insincerity ? And 
which triumphs over conditions and becomes sincere ? 

Are the characters of Charles and Victor developed 
from the hints in history as to their characters ? 

Are Polyxena and D'Ormea more dependent upon 
the poet's imagination ? 

Mr. Symons says of Polyxena : *' From first to last 
she sees through Charles, Victor, and D'Ormea, 
who neither understand one another nor perhaps 
themselves ; from first to last she is the same clear- 
headed, decisive, consistent woman, loyal always to 
love, but always yet more loyal toward truth." 
Does this exaggerate somewhat her powers of pene- 
tration ? Did she not suspect D'Ormea of plotting 
against Charles to the last ? and was it not some- 
time before she saw through Victor, and did she 
know that Charles all through was acting a part in 
his insistence upon Victor's integrity ? 

Of Charles Mr. Symons speaks as having *'good 
intentions and vacillating will." Should you not 
say, rather, that his will to honor his father was so 
strong that it overcame every other consideration ? 
(Note what Polyxena says, ** King Charles," Part 
II., lines 335-344.) 

Of Victor he says he " is an impressive study of 
' the old age of crafty men ' — the futile wiliness 
of decrepit and persevering craft, — though we are 
scarcely made to feel the once potent personality of 
the man, or to understand the influence which his 



KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES 337 

mere word or presence still has upon his son." Do 
you agree with this, or do you think the influence is 
understandable upon the ground that Charles was 
immensely flattered by his father's confidence in his 
power to straighten out the aftairs of the kingdom, 
and was always overwhelmed by the slightest marks 
of affection ? 

Of D'Orm.ea he says: ** D'Ormea, who check- 
mates all the schemes of his old master, is a most curious 
and subtle study of one who * serves God at the devil's 
bidding,' as he himself confesses in the cynical frank- 
ness of his continual ironical self-criticism. After 
twenty years of unsuccessful intrigue, he has learned 
by experience that honesty is the best policy. But at 
every step his evil reputation clogs and impedes his 
honest action, and the very men whom he is now 
most sincere in helping are the most mistrustful of his 
sincerity." Does this do full justice to D'Ormea .? 
Does he act sincerely because he finds '* honesty the 
best policy," or because he really desires to be of 
some use in the world ? 

Artistically speaking, is there anything especially 
noteworthy in this drama beyond smooth diction and 
an occasional poetic flight ? 

Are the allusions mostly of a historical nature, 
lending color and life to the situations ? 



Single Poem Studies: "The Return 
OF THE Druses " 

Page 
Vol. Text Note 
** The Return of the Druses " iii i 293 

I. Topic for Papery Classzvorky or Private Study. 
— The Dawn of Druse Deliverance : Shall it come 
through the Hakeem or Loys ? (Act I. For synthetic 
views of this and following acts, see the digests Cam- 
berwell Brow?ii?igy also Introduction, pp. vii — xx, and 
for allusions to Druse history and doctrine. Notes, as 
cited above.) 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — Is the 
unfolding of the dramatic situation, in Act I., accom- 
plished skilfully ? Is it clear, but lifeHke, and its 
exposition so distributed among the actors that the 
spectators need have no sense of an elaborate expla- 
nation being made .? 

In his paper on <* The Return of the Druses," 
Mr. Gamaliel Bradford, Jr., says : ** Nearly the whole 
of the first act is occupied in making clear the situation, 
though with a good deal of bustle and vivacity. 
Various subordinate Druses are introduced, anxious to 
begin their rebellion by pillage. They are checked by 
Khalil, who thus has an opportunity to repeat to them 
and the audience what has been done for them and is 
to be done by Djabal, the prophet, the Messiah, the 
reincarnation of Hakeem, who is to be their leader. 



THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES 339 

Note that the same device is employed by Shakespeare, 
who makes Prospero in wrath chide the mutinous Ariel 
by recalling to him details necessary to explain the 
play. It is one of the many expedients invented by 
dramatists to avoid the dreary necessity of telling the 
audience what it ought to know, better at any rate 
than the bald prologues of Euripides or the eternal 
tvjo-gentlem en- meeting of the lazy Fletcher." (** Boston 
Browning Society Papers," p. 272.) 

The office of the first act in the construction of a 
drama is, however, not merely to exhibit the preced- 
ing causes of the action, the antecedents and relation 
of the hero to the movement he is preparing ; but, 
also, to give a glimpse of some counter- play against 
him which is held back from manifesting itself de- 
cidedly, until the second act. Is Browning neglectful 
of this important element of preparation for a struggle ? 
How does he present it ? 

**What the drama presents," let Freytag remind 
us, since his work is generally accepted as an exposi- 
tion of the general rules of dramatic construction estab- 
lished by the usage of great writers — ** is always a 
struggle, which, with strong perturbations of soul, the 
hero wages against opposing forces. And as the hero 
must be endowed with a strong life, with a certain 
one-sidedness, and be in embarrassment, the opposing 
power must be made visible in a human representative." 
Who is this representative in Browning's first act who 
gives us in his person a glimpse of some threatening 
counter-play against the hero's plot of action? Is it 
well to learn his importance so gradually and bhndly 
as one does in this act t How long is it after he is 
mentioned before his possible future importance in the 
impending revolt against the Prefect's rule looms up 1 



340 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Does Browning succeed very well in making it 
seem natural and reasonable in Loys not to tell at once 
why he has returned to the island ? 

On this point Mr. Bradford comments that Loys 
** refrains from discovering" his appointment and his 
'* hopes of benefiting his Druse friends," and that it is 
an important element in the action that he should so 
refrain, but he adds : '* I am not sure that it is wholly 
consistent with the open boyish character of Loys, 
who would be more likely to proclaim it at once and 
toss his cap in the air." 

This objection seems to be well founded on the 
character of Loys ; but is there not a good reason or 
two insinuated dexterously by the poet for his silence 
here ? If his friendship for Djabal is not enough to 
keep him quiet till he has told him first, how about his 
love for Anael, and its efi^ect also upon the perplexed 
mood in which he stands at the close of Act I. ? 

What does Act L reveal of the character of Loys ? 

Is Act I. vivid as an opening spectacle ? Would it 
be eiFective on the stage ? 

Are all the main characters introduced by mention 
in this act, and how tell-tale is the mention ? 

II. Topic for Paper, CJasswork, or Private Study. 
— The Hakeem and his Bride Falter. Loys's Weight 
in the Scale. (Act II.) 

Queries for Investigatio7i a?id Discussion. — Is the 
motive of this drama the Incarnation, as suggested in 
the Introduction to the Camberzvell Brow twig (Vol. 
III., p. viii) > 

Will any other motive elucidate the structure of the 
play as well ? 

Is this motive too abstract to be the shaping influ- 
ence of a dramatic action 1 Or in a drama, as in other 



THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES 341 

works of art, is the question, properly, not what 
material is used, but how it is used ? — Is it, in this 
play, so closely adapted to suit the unfolding of a stir- 
ring and eventful plot, and so blent with human im- 
pulses and desires and aims that it loses its abstract 
theological aspect and becomes a living factor in 
action ? 

If it is historically true that such a doctrine has 
vitally affected the character of a race and the events 
occurring to it, either by behef or scepticism, is it, 
therefore, profoundly suited to receive dramatic treat- 
ment r Why not ? 

In this case, what connection has faith in the Druse 
doctrine of the Incarnation with the-dehverance of the 
Druse nation ? 

What connection has the human love of Djabal and 
Anael for each other with doubt of it ? 

Is the influence of Loys upon Anael and Djabal 
natural ? What element of conflict with their notion 
of the Incarnation does the Frank Knight-Hospitaller 
bring into the plot ? 

How are the relations of Djabal, Anael, and Loys 
to one another and to the lever which is to raise the 
Druse revolt — the Incarnation — brought into play 
and counterplay in Act II., so as to make the action 
seem doubtful, as it should seem, at this stage of the 
movement, while yet these very elements of doubt and 
love are the means of initiating the action about to 
follow ? 

What part has Khahl to play ? Is it an unim- 
portant part ? Is he disconnected with the In- 
carnation motive ? Is any one of the characters 
disconnected with it ? 

Is the mutual hesitation of Djabal and his bride 



342 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

a means of delaying or precipitating the climax of the 
following act ? Is it skilfully managed ? Or are the 
two long asides which take place during their inter- 
view awkward ? If what these asides accomplish is 
essentially necessary for the action, are they therefore 
good ? Could the same effect have been accom- 
plished without any stage awkwardness, by some other 
expedient ? 

The reason for asides on the stage seems to be the 
need to give conflicting inner points of view to the 
audience without making them known to the actors. 
What has been the usage in regard to them ? Is 
there a tendency in the most modern play writing to 
reform such usage in accord with a more realistic art, 
which in this act would have modified Browning's 
asides to advantage ? 

III. Topic for Paper, Classwork, or Private Study. 
— The Hakeem Forced to Act. The Prefect Goes 
to his Doom. Loys is Disillusionized. (Act. III.) 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. Wherein 
does the climax of the action consist as brought out 
in this act ? 

A series of conflicting effects are wrought out 
successively through the relations of Anael and Loys, of 
Djabal and Anael, of Loys and the Prefect, and finally, 
through the relations of the Prefect to the impending 
deed which is to start the insurrection. Are these 
effects so manifold that too varied an excitement 
results ? Or are all these strands of the action inter- 
woven so as to deepen continuously the suspense and 
intensity ? 

Is it a mistake or a merit in the construction of this 
art that its outcome is not put into effect till the first 
scene of the next act, and that this outcome — the 



THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES 343 

Prefect's assassination, which is to be the signal for the 
Drase revolt — seems to be imminent at the hands of 
Djabal, although he has been struggling against it ? 

Why are we left in the dark about what the crucial 
test of faith and love is which Anael is contemplating ? 
Does this add an unnecessary element of agitation and 
suspense to the plot? Or since Djabal's unsettlement 
of all his plans is due to Anael, and Loys's perplex- 
ities are also due to Anael, is it especially appropriate 
that she shall become the unsuspected rallying- point 
of the action here, instead of Djabal, who only seems 
to be, while she really is, that rallying-point ? 

It is at this stage in the development of a drama 
that the dramatist disposes his material according to 
whether he means his hero to push his way on, strug- 
gling actively for the mastery until the catastrophe is 
reached, as Macbeth does, for example, or whether he 
shall henceforth be dominated, as Othello is, by some 
counter-force. Djabal has hitherto actively directed 
his future, and until now has felt free and able to 
consult his own will. In this act he finds his own 
past course in the way of his new desires and plans. 
It compels him to proceed as he had originally in- 
tended before he had questioned the honesty of his 
course. The counter-force should loom up here. 
Does it ? 

Is this counter-force, w^hich is destined to direct 
the course of events in the remainder of the play, 
obscure because it comes from an unexpected quarter, 
— because the public is in the habit of looking to 
rivals of the hero in love, like Loys, or competitors 
for power, like the Nuncio, for such a counter-force, 
instead of to a woman who loves the hero ? Or is it 
obscure because intentionally it has not been indicated 



344 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

clearly, since at this stage of the game it would be 
impolitic to do so ? 

Is it desirable -or not that the audience should get 
a clew or two to the coming action, but not be able 
to guess certainly what is in store for it ? 

How has Browning manipulated his material here 
with reference to the oncoming action ? Why is 
Anael given the key to the situation by having the 
ring intrusted to her which will throw open the palace 
doors to the people ? Is this accidental, or significant, 
and in agreement with the structure of the play ? 

Does Browning leave too much room for the actress 
to make the part of Anael portentous and full of 
meaning, so as to excite without enlightening the 
audience ? Is his art at fault in depending so much 
on the actors' ability to follow and interpret the trend 
of the play sympathetically ? 

Is this act, in particular, one that would gain in 
clarity by being put on the stage instead of being read? 

Loys is virtually liberated from fulfilhng his vows to 
knighthood by the Prefect's revelation to him of the 
secret iniquities of the order. Freed from his per- 
plexities, he is able now to indulge his love for Anael, 
to take his place as Prefect, and to make all known 
to Djabal. Does this promise to be of direct impor- 
tance in the action, or is it too late ? Moreover, is 
the audience so assured by this time of Anael' s love 
for Djabal, that it must be aware that Loys can only 
affect the plot externally ? 

Is it fitting that Loys's power to check Djabal shall 
depend at this point on Anael, and that the audience 
must centre on her future course what curiosity and 
interest it has in the young Frank's success in love? 

IV. Topic for Paper, Classzvork, or Private Study. 



THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES 345 

— Anael Proves her Doubt. The Hakeem Confesses 
the Truth, but Holds to his Mission. The Nuncio 
Arrives. (Act. IV.) 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — The 
heroine of the play becomes the hero in the opening 
scene of Act IV. That is, the active role which 
Djabal has assumed is suddenly taken up by that 
person who during the latter part of the climax act 
(Act III.) has been steadily budding into prominence 
as the leader of the coming counter-action, from the 
moment that Djabal has to give up the initiating of 
events, and is forced to succum.b to his own past. 

Is this scene not only original and thrilHng, but 
wholly in accord with the artistic design and structure 
of the drama and with the character-interest .? Mr. 
Arthur Symons, in writing of this scene (** Introduc- 
tion to Browning," p. 60), which he considers mag- 
nificent and the finest in the play, calls attention to 
the ** singularly impressive touch of poetry and stage- 
craft in a certain line of it, where Djabal and Anael 
meet, at the moment when she has done the deed 
which he is waiting to do. Unconscious of what she 
has done, he tells her to go : 

' I slay him here, 
And here you ruin all. Why speak you not ? 
Anael, the Prefect comes ! [Anael screams.'\ ' 

This mere stage-direction is a really great dramatic 
stroke. With this involuntary scream (and the shud- 
der and start aside one imagines, to see if the dead 
man really is coming) a great actress might thrill an 
audience." 

Is this play, as a whole, rich or poor in such dra- 
matic opportunities ? 



346 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Commenting on Djabal's speech as he goes to kill 
the Prefect, and the surprise when, dashing the curtains 
aside, he discovers Anael, Mr. Bradford, in the paper 
already cited, asks : ** Could any nerves forbear to 
thrill at that?" Although he accounts this, and the 
many other kindred eiFects in this drama as picturesque 
and dexterous, he questions whether it is deeply enough 
rooted in human nature to be worthy of Browning. 
" And afterwards? Flow does it help us the least in 
the world to get at Djabal's character, which is all 
that interests now?" 

But is this not precisely the scene which is based 
profoundly upon Anael' s nature? In it has she not 
put to a supreme test her love and the doubts which 
contended within her for the victory over her faith 
in the Hakeem ? And is it not precisely this deed 
of hers which constitutes a searching test of Djabal's 
recently awakened desires to play an honest part, — 
not the god's, but a man's ? And does it not directly 
help us to get at Djabal's character, not merely for its 
own sake, since that is not quite ** all that interests 
now," but for the sake of learning what effect his 
character, in the light of this deed, will now have upon 
his future course and upon the impending Druse 
revolution ? 

What does Anael's act bring about? Is it natural 
and effective that it should make Djabal confess the 
whole truth to her ? Is it equally natural that this 
confession should awaken the revulsion it does in 
Anael, and then should push her to urge that Djabal 
shall confess himself as fully to the public ? 

What light does his refusal to do this throw upon 
his character ? Does it not present it as still balancing 
between his fundamental mysticism, and the necessi- 



THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES 347 

ties of his life's mission, on the one side, and his 
newly aroused fealty to truth and love, and the criti- 
cism of Oriental methods which Western ideas of life 
have started in his mind, on the other side ? 

Is it true to life, in general, that a hero physically 
brave and habitually adroit in manipulating public 
affairs, should prefer to seem more than he is, — 
to lack moral courage to be as honest in public as 
he is willing to be in private, — at least, until after 
he has gained his point, and accomplished a public 
service ? 

Is it exclusively an Oriental trait to justify deception 
of the public on the plea that it is for the public 
good ? Is the European, in fact, as Djabal intimates 
(lines 125-130), apt to be more hypocritical, because 
more aware of the equivocalness of his public policy, 
than the Oriental ? Do recent American and Euro- 
pean politics supply such instances ? 

Would it have been wise in Djabal to have deceived 
Anael herself here, when she makes her second appeal 
(lines 86-94) ? 

If he could have done it, would it have been a proof 
of the depth of his love for her, or of its shallowness ? 

Is it a tribute to Anael' s character that he could 
never bear to deceive her and could not do so now ? 

Is it a proof of his masculine stupidity, however, 
that while he thinks so highly of her character and 
has had such a proof of her moral courage, and heard, 
moreover, how ready she is to dare to follow truth at 
any cost, he thoroughly underrates her moral nerve 
and intellectual capacity to direct the action herself 
or to obstruct in any way the course he has now 
determined upon? 

Does Browning account convincingly for Djabal' s 



348 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

character being of such mixed mettle, part typically 
Oriental, part sceptical ? 

Is Browning wrong in depicting so exalted a nature 
as Anael's in an Oriental woman ? 

«*In Anael, as in Djabal, though in a less degree," 
says Mr. Bradford, " there is a very strong mixture 
of the nineteenth century ; and if you wish to feel 
this fully, I should advise reading Pierre Loti's 
* Roman d'un Spahi,' where you will find the 
character of an Oriental woman portrayed in a very 
different fashion." 

But is it not a manifestly superficial proceeding to 
class all Orientals together without discrimination ? 
Does Browning write from a deeper knowledge of 
different quaUties and degrees of development in the 
Oriental than Loti does ? Does Loti view all women 
with bias ? 

What warrant is there for exhibidng an initiated 
Druse of the Sheik's family as an instructed and 
heterodox type of the Oriental, so much so, indeed, 
that he furnishes one of the nearest mediaeval pro- 
genitors of that species of nineteenth-century agnos- 
tic whose scepticism has led him so far as to believe 
firmly in the Unknowable ? What warrant, moreover, 
is there for depicting an inidate Druse maiden of the 
purest blood and an unusually secluded household, as 
distinguished for intellectual acuteness and emotional 
energy, far above the usual slavish inmate of an 
Oriental harem ? (See Camberwell Brozu?2i?igy Vol. 
III., Notes 20, p. 303, and 116, p. 304, for informa- 
tion on the philosophy distinctive of the Druse Ockal, 
and for the learning which the initiate Druse woman 
of rank was free to attain. ) 

Does Loys put the hero in the shade ? Is he too 



THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES 349 

** fresh," or the soul of truth? Is he as dis- 
interested in his attachment to the Druses as he 
thinks he is? Is he depicted as Djabal's moral 
superior in depth of virtue ? Or is he merely his 
superior in intention, and as to desires as yet un- 
tempted and untried ? Does Leys appear to ad- 
vantage or disadvantage beside him in the dialogue 
between them after the guard has disclosed the Pre- 
fect's death and the Druse revolt? 

Why is Act IV. so continuously eventful and full 
of surprise ? Is it too much so for a properly con- 
structed fourth act ? Or is the w^ay it proceeds the 
legitimate result of Browning's design ? This, on 
analysis, seems to be to have the plot follow Djabal's 
lead up to the climax. Act III., and then to follow 
the counter-movement, centred in Anael and disput- 
ing the sway of the original movement, up to the 
catastrophe. Act V. 

Is this a confusion of the plot of event, or a totally 
original way of combining the qualities of the old 
drama of action and outcome with the new drama of 
will and initiation of action ? 

V. Topic for Paper y Classwork, or Private Study. 
— The Nuncio and Loys Indulge their Last Hopes. 
Anael Betrays but Saves the Hakeem and the Druses. 
(Act V.) 

Queries for hivestigation and Discussion. — After 
an act so spirited as Act IV. is, there ought to be a 
mass of effects in the final act to round out the 
plot perfecdy. How does it meet this dramatic 
necessity, — as to crowd and spectacular background, 
as to spirited dialogue, and as to unexpected turns 
of event ? 

Is there humor in this act ? 



350 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Has it an element of pathos ? 

Is the play, as a whole, a remarkable blend of rich 
spectacle and thrilling plot, joined with character- 
development and symbolism ? And does the structure 
of the piece betoken this, by carrying on the plot in two 
currents directly conducing toward the catastrophe, one 
movement steadily falling towards the final events of a 
successful revolution, and a second steadily thwarting 
the other, in order to educe a higher spiritual denoue- 
ment ? Does this explain why the tragical deaths of 
hero and heroine are none the less triumphant, and the 
dehverance of the Druses after all accomplished ? 

What is the bearing of the Nuncio's part in the 
action ? For his character, see programme on ** The 
Prelate." 

Is Christianity represented well by comparison with 
the Druse religion in this play in the persons of Loys, 
the Prefect, and the Nuncio ? 

Is the coming of the Venetian admiral anything 
more than ornamental ? 

Does the final act bring Khalil, Loys, Djabal, and 
Anael all to the climax of their spiritual possibilities in 
character? How is this accomplished in each case, 
consistently with their foregoing parts ? " Though Loys, 
Khalil, and Anael have some life and reahty," says 
Professor Walker (««The Greater Victorian Poets," 
p. 189), *Mt is hardly sufficient to give the play its 
proper balance." Is this observation hard on Brown- 
ing, or on Professor Walker's comprehension of 
Browning's design ? 

Should Anael be condemned as disloyal to her own 
people and to her lover ? Is she loyal to them in a 
deeper and truer sense ? 

Does she play the part of the Hamza, symbolizing 



THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES 351 

in the drama the Universal Intelligence, who completes 
the revelation of the Hakeem to man, as suggested 
in the Camberwell Brow fling (Vol. III., Introduction, 
p. xii) ? 

What growth in grace and honesty of character, 
making himself wellnigh what he seemed to be and 
was not before, does Djabal owe to her ? Was her 
last test of his love for her and his regard for the truth 
more successful than her earlier ones ? Compare with 
her scene with Djabal in Act IV. 

Why does she salute Djabal as *' Hakeem"? Is 
she deceived? Does she wish to delude others, to 
save Djabal at the expense of her own veracity ? Is 
the essential nature of love revealed to her in that 
poignant moment, and does she express her sense of 
the half-divine, half-human quality of love in her last 
cry, completing so her revelation of the symbolic 
truth of the Incarnation ? (See, on this query, Cam- 
berwell Brow?ii?ig, Vol. III., Introduction, pp. xii, 
xiii, xvi, xvii, xix, and xx.) 

Does Djabal also come to understand that a deeper 
truth belongs to his role of Hakeem than he suspected.? 
In what different and characteristic ways do the others 
take it .? (See Introduction, before cited, for remarks 
on this and other of these queries.) 

Are the diction and imagery of the play suited to its 
Oriental environment } 



Single Poem Studies: "A Blot in 
THE 'Scutcheon." 

Page 
Vol. Text Note 
<< A Blot in the 'Scutcheon" iu 69 306 

Topic for Paper, Classwork, or Private Study. — 
The Situation : Its Effect upon the Characters and its 
Artistic Presentation. 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — (For 
account of the situation, see notes to Camberwell 
Browning as given above.) How much of the situa- 
tion comes out in the first scene with the retainers, 
and how is a note of foreboding and trouble struck in 
the midst of the curiosity and delight of the retainers ? 

Has the poet succeeded in characterizing the dif- 
ferent retainers vividly with a few dexterous touches, 
and so made this first scene both lively and natural ? 

In the second scene we are introduced to all the 
remaining characters except Mildred. Should you de- 
scribe Thorold, as he appears in this scene, to be a man 
very proud of his ancient and irreproachable line ? 
Mertoun, to be a young man caring more for individ- 
ual worth than for family grandeur ? Guendolen to 
be a woman of wit and wisdom, with a much better 
head than Austin ; and Austin to be a man of warm 
affections, blundering honesty, but very little penetra- 
tion, and in all intellectual things following the lead of 
Guendolen ? 



A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON 353 

Do the hesitation at times in Mertoun's manner 
and the criticisms of Guendolen echoed by Austin 
also strike a note of trouble to come ? But is there 
any hint of what that trouble is to be ? 

In the opening of the third scene, where Guendolen 
and Mildred talk, is it very evident that something is 
wrong, but do you get any idea of what it is until 
Mertoun enters her window ? What has Guendolen 
said in this conversation to throw still further light on 
the ideals of Thorold ? 

In the scene between Mildred and Mertoun what 
revelation is made of their respective characters ? 
Does he show that he feels such supreme love as 
theirs makes any sin they may have been guilty of 
dwindle into insignificance ? Is he justified in so feel- 
ing, and does it show the depth and sincerity of his 
love ? 

With Mildred, the notions of right and wrong are 
more fixed. She has sinned against her cherished 
ideal, and cannot see any way in which the sin can be 
wiped out except through punishment. Holding the 
ideal she did, could she have felt any other way ? 
Does she, however, show, by the end of the scene, 
that had the situation developed differently she might 
again have been happy r Does the language in this 
scene express intense emotional fervor } 

In Act II., when the worst of all blows falls upon 
Thorold, does he show his innate fineness of character 
in his manner of taking it, and also, from what hints 
we can gain, in the way he declares he will act ^ In 
his interview with Mildred what changes his intention 
and makes him lose entire control of himself .!* Was 
he justified in so quickly jumping to the most evil con- 
struction of Mildred's actions.? In any case, should 
23 



354 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

he not have investigated further before he decided 
upon action ? 

Has Browning made of Guendolen in this scene a 
type of w^oman's noblest friendship and intuition ? 

Was Mildred too much overwhelmed with the 
sense of her own guilt to make any defence, or was 
she chiefly anxious to shield her lover ? Was it any 
wonder that the tortured girl could not see any way 
out of the dilemma and so put herself in a position to 
be horribly misjudged ? If she had told the whole 
truth to Thorold, do you think the tragedy would 
have been prevented ? 

How is the one other chance to prevent the tragedy 
lost ? 

Do you get the impression, in the opening of the 
third act, that Thorold had been struggling with his 
passion of rage, but is irresistibly drawn by it to the 
spot where he may meet the man who has done him 
such wrong ? When he finds out that Mildred's 
lover is Mertoun, does he act entirely consistently 
with what he had told Mildred in the first place in 
the morning, namely, that she might marry her lover, 
and he would do all to shield her, etc. ? The revul- 
sion of feeHng when he discovered that the lover and 
Mertoun were one and the same, instead of minimiz- 
ing the sin as Guendolen felt, seemed in his eyes to 
maximize it ; was this because of the deception that 
had been practised upon him, or because of the sin 
itself? 

Does Mertoun explain satisfactorily in his dying 
speech how it was he did not take the straightforward 
path in the first place ? Is it not perfectly natural 
that a young and modest youth should have an awe of 
the distinguished head of a great family, and be afraid 



A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON 355 

to press his suit for fear he might lose ? Is it he who 
is to blame so much as a condition of society where 
one man rules all the doings of his family? 

Do Mertoun and Mildred both see at the end that 
a higher law than man's law would exonerate them, 
and that Thorold had sinned more in taking into his 
own hands their punishment than they had sinned in 
their love ? 

Could argument or reason have convinced Thorold 
of this, or only the awakening which came through 
the death he himself dealt Mertoun ? 

Does the peculiar pathos of this play grow out of 
the fact that three pure, good, and innocent people 
become strangled in the meshes of conventional ideals 
which regard such love as that of Mildred and 
Mertoun a sin, no matter what the conditions, and 
which consider that no subsequent action can expiate 
such a sin ? 

If they had all known what they realized at the 
last, would the tragedy have happened ? 

While the situation in this play could be outlined 
in a few words, its power consists in its moving pres- 
entation of the emotions of the various actors in the 
drama from Gerard up to Thorold : in Gerard do we 
see love in conflict with loyalty ; in Mildred, love 
in conflict with a preconceived ideal, bringing the 
emotions of fear, grief, humiliation, and finally triumph 
and forgiveness, in its train ; in Thorold, love in con- 
flict with the honor of his family ; in Mertoun, love 
in conflict with awe of a great personage ; and finally, 
in Guendolen, love large and whole ? 

Is the language everywhere suited to the intensity 
of the emotion ? 

The moral and artistic aspects of this play have 



356 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

called forth a number of diverse opinions. Mr. 
Arthur Symons says : " The whole action is passion- 
ately pathetic, and it is infused with a twofold 
tragedy, — the tragedy of the sin and that of the 
misunderstanding, — the last and final tragedy which 
hangs on a word, a word spoken when only too late 
to save three lives. This irony of circumstance is at 
once the source of earth's saddest discords, and the 
motive of art's truest tragedies. It takes the place, 
in our modern world, of that Necessity, the irresist- 
ible Fate of the Greeks ; and is not less impressive 
because it arises from the impulse and unreasoning 
wilfulness of man rather than from the implacable 
insistency of God. It is with perfect justice, both 
moral and artistic, that the fatal crisis, though medi- 
ately the result of accident, of error, is shown to be 
the consequence and the punishment of wrong, A 
tragedy resulting from the mistakes of the wholly 
innocent would jar on our sense of right, and could 
never produce a legitimate work of art. ... In this 
play, each of the characters calls down upon his own 
head the suffering which at first seems to be a mere 
caprice and confusion of chance." 

Looked at in this way, do not the suffering and 
the punishment seem entirely out of proportion to the 
sins committed ? 

Does not the tragedy of this play rather consist in 
the fact that the punishment is disproportionate to 
the sin, and yet that, given the characters and their 
ideals, it could not be averted, because to none of 
them had come the larger view of human life which 
recognizes that sin against conventional standards may 
grow out of exaltation of character instead of from 
degeneration of character? 



A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON 357 

Professor Walker remarks : " The great fault 
of *A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' is that in it the 
moral situation overtops the characters, whereas the 
true dramatic method is to express the moral only in 
and through the characters. . . . Mildred's character 
is almost summed up in the moral situation in which 
she is placed ; there is no opportunity to know her 
otherwise." 

If this were true, the denouement would seem to 
be the only one possible, while what we actually 
feel is that the denouement might have been different 
with dijfferent characters ; therefore the characters 
dominate the situation, not the situation the characters ? 

Suppose it be admitted that ** Mildred's character 
is summed up in the situation," is that necessarily a 
fault ? Would a young woman in such a coil of 
sorrow and shame be likely to show much of her 
character that was not related to the problem ? Could 
such a problem help being dominant ? 

Mr. Sharp's criticism is that the play **has the 
radical fault characteristic of writers of sensational 
fiction, a too promiscuous ' clearing the ground ' by 
syncope and suicide." Given the passion of Tho- 
rold, who murdered Mertoun, which is a frequent 
enough sort of passion to be perfecdy natural, — even 
to-day, — do not the other two deaths follow naturally, 
Mildred's from a broken heart (not an unknown 
occurrence) and Thorold's by his own hand r 

Mr. Symons, though perhaps mistaking the motive 
of the play, has a thorough appreciation of its beauty. 
He says : ** The language has a rich simplicity of the 
highest dramatic value, quick with passion, pregnant 
with thought, and masterly in imaginadon ; the plot 
and characters are perhaps more interesting and affect- 



35^ BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

ing than in any of the other plays ; while the effect 
of the whole is impressive from its unity." 

Other criticisms appreciative of the play are Mr. 
Skelton's, who calls it **one of the most perfectly 
conceived and perfectly executed tragedies in the 
language ; " and Charles Dickens declared he knew no 
love like that of Mildred and Mertoun, no passion 
like it, no moulding of a splendid thing after its con- 
ception like it, and that he would rather have written 
this play than any other play of modern times. (For 
another appreciative opinion, see Introduction to Vol. 
III., Ca?nberwell Brow?img.) 

Do the criticisms against the play here given show 
not only a cut and dried definition of what a drama 
ought to be, but also a misunderstanding of the motive 
of the drama, which they interpret as being the old 
one of sin and its retribution, instead of the new one 
of sin and its relativity ? 

Professor Lounsbury, in an article in the Atlantic 
Monthly for December, 1899, under the caption "A 
Philistine View," declares that there is a *Mack of 
adequate motive for the existence of the situation in 
which the lovers are represented as being at the time 
the play opens. And this is followed by a succession 
of acts, each one of which seems to vie with the one 
preceding in folly, if not surpass it. . . . It is simply 
impossible to conceive rational beings in real life con- 
ducting themselves with so thorough a disregard of 
ordinary sense." If it were admitted that the char- 
acters do not act like nineteenth-century college gradu- 
ates, could not their actions be defended as natural to 
the England of the Georgian Era, when the head of 
a great family was indeed awe-inspiring, old-style 
romance dominant, and girls were not instructed in 



A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON 359 

all knowledge, as they are now ? and also on the 
ground that highly strung, sensitive people may at any 
time act irrationally under stress of great emotion ? 
Would there be any tragedy or sorrow or regret in 
life if human beings acted only rationally ? 

One of his points is that the clever Guendolen gives 
up al] effort when she finds Thorold has gone off (see 
act ii., lines 434-443). On the contrary, does she 
not distinctly say that she and Austin will go and 
seek for Thorold ? And in the next act is not the 
impression distinctly given that they had been looking 
for him all day ? (For further remarks on this article, 
see Poet-lore, January, 1900.) 



Single Poem Studies: "Colombe's 
Birthday " 

Page 
Vol. Text Note 

'< Colombe's Birthday " iii 122 314 

I. Topic for Paper y Classzuorky or Private Study. — 
The Forces of Selfishness and Unselfishness at Work 
around the Unconscious Colombe. (Act I.) 

Questions for Investigation and Discussion, — How 
much of the situation, past and present, comes out in 
the talk of the courtiers ? 

Is it true regard for Colombe that causes all the 
courtiers to shirk the responsibility of carrying the 
announcement to her of the change in her aiFairs, or 
does it grow out of their consciousness of their dis- 
loyalty in not rallying round her whom they had so 
recently crowned with acclamation ? Was their meek 
acceptance of the Duke due to any moral recognition 
of his right, or merely to the selfish desire to provide 
for themselves under any circumstances ? Is there any- 
thing to choose between these courtiers ? 

How is it at once made evident that Valence is a 
man of a different stamp ? 

Does this act serve clearly to oudine the influences 
which are to affect Colombe' s life ? 

Is there any hint at all that Valence is in love with 
her? 



COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 361 

II. Topic for Paper y Classwork, or Private Study. — 
Colombe Awakes to the Realities of Life, Learns a 
Truer Source of her Right to Rule, and supported by 
Valence Decides to Defy Berthold. (Act II,) 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — Does 
Colombe' s reasoning about the reports she has heard 
of her cousin's intentions, and her easy allayment of 
fears, growing out of the lapse of attention to her- 
self, show how innocent she is of the ways of the 
world ? 

Is the fineness of her nature shown by her immedi- 
ate response to Valence when he pleads the cause of 
Cleves, and also by her immediate relinquishment of 
the crown, or does the latter show that she has taken 
too personal a view of her position, and has laid 
greater stress upon personal devotion to herself than 
upon the duties her position imposed upon her ? 

How does Valence bring her to a realization of her 
duties? Is he justified in basing her right to rule upon 
the need of Cleves to have just such a heart as hers 
to sympathize with its wrongs, instead of upon the 
suffrage of Pope or King, etc. ? 

Although the courtiers are impressed with the actions 
of both Vale;ice and Colombe, especially Guibert, how 
do they show themselves true to their instincts the 
moment Berthold is announced t 

III. Topic for Paper, Classic ork, or Private Study. 
— The Effect of Colombe's Defiance upon Berthold 
and of Valence upon Colombe. (Act III.) 

Queries for hwestigation and Discussion. — Does it 
appear, from the remarks of Melchior and Berthold 
and the latter' s action upon Colombe's defiance, that 
Berthold is a man who enjoys a little opposition ? 

Are we to suppose that his past love episode and 



362 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

his disappointment really seared his heart, or that am- 
bition had always been his strongest motive ? 

When Colombe comes actually into his presence, 
she wavers and is on the point of admitting his claim. 
What decides her to make a stand against him, the 
thought of the wrongs of Cleves or the thought of her 
own degradation from power ? 

Does she show herself to have developed much in 
this scene ? 

Does Valence in making her defiance for her also 
forget the wrongs of Cleves ? 

The courtiers do not seem to be deceived as to the 
inner motive of his allegiance to Colombe. Is it be- 
cause they cannot imagine such a stand as that taken 
by Valence to be based upon anything but self-interest 
in some form or other, or because the fervor of his 
manner belied him ? 

Could Berthold afford to be deferential, knowing he 
had all the power on his side ? 

Was some sense of justice in his heart touched, or 
did he scent afar a danger in the fascination of 
Colombe's personality, since it could raise up for her 
such a valiant defender as Valence ? 

How much does Colombe mean when she says to 
Valence, ** You spoke and I am saved" ? Does she 
refer simply to her position as Duchess, or has Valence 
in his speech awakened her to her true duties again ? 

From the actions of Valence so far, can it be pre- 
dicted that he will give an unbiassed judgment on the 
question of the respecdve rights of Colombe and Ber- 
thold, even if it should tell against his own chances ? 

IV. Topic for Paper, Classworky or Private Study. 
— Colombe, given the Choice between Love and the 
World, Hesitates. (Act IV.) 



COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 363 

Qiieries for Investigation and Discussion. — Do the 
courtiers again show their absolute selfishness and their 
lack of comprehension of anything but base motives 
in the opening scene of this act ? 

Is Valence hypercritical in regard to himself when 
he discovers he has been working for his own benefit 
more than for that of Cleves ? Do you not feel cer- 
tain that under any circumstances he would have taken 
up the cause of Cleves ? Because great personal hap- 
piness is opening before him, need he necessarily neg- 
lect his people ? If it came to a point where he must 
choose between his love for Colombe and his cham- 
pionship of the people, which ought to be his 
choice ? 

What far worse complication is introduced into tlie 
problem by Berthold's offer of his hand to Colombe ? 

Is Berthold's misunderstanding of Valence's manner 
of taking this announcement natural to a man in his 
exalted position ? Is his obtuseness further illustrated 
by his offering a post to Valence ? 

In the subsequent scene between Valence and 
Colombe, does she know all the time that it is herself 
Valence loves, and talks as she does in order to en- 
courage him to make a declaration ? or is she uncer- 
tain whether he loves her or not, and is anxious to 
reassure herself? or is she surprised when she finds it 
is herself? Is she flattered by the offer of Berthold ? 
Why does she leave Valence in doubt as to her inten- 
tions ? — because she is not certain which way she will 
decide, or because she wants to see for herself whether 
Valence has correctly reported the attitude of Berthold, 
or because she wants to do Valence the honor oF 
accepting him in the presence of Berthold ? 

Does Valence plead the cause of Berthold as disin- 



364 BRO^A^NING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

terestedly as he might ? Is this because of a selfish 
desire to have her himself, or because he is burning to 
have her live up to the highest ideal and remain faith- 
ful to herself and to the love he believ^es she has al- 
ready shown him ? 

Is he right in thinking she has shown him her love ? 
If he had loved her and did not know whether she 
loved him or not, would it have been more honorable 
in him not to make such a point of the Duke's lack of 
love ? But knowing it, as he thinks, must he in 
justice to the sanctity of love let her know that she 
would be exchanging love for position merely ? 

Does Colombe have a momentary disillusionment 
when she declares that "nothing's what it calls itself/' 
— feeling that selfishness, after all, underlies devotion, 
zeal, faith, loyalty, — or is she indulging in a little 
playful thrust at something which she really considers 
supreme ? 

Has not her own love been roused because of the 
service to herself rather than because Valence took the 
part of the suiFering people ? 

Is it quite kind in her to compare Valence, after 
the earnest and passionate appeal he has just made to 
her, to a hawk in the valley ? Does this last speech 
of hers leave one in doubt as to whether she could 
not be won by Berthold if he were to use the right 
tactics ? 

Miss Vida D. Scudder's view upon Colombe's feel- 
ing in regard to Valence's love is of interest here : " Of 
instinctive truth to the broader law, there is an exqui- 
site instance in that idyllic drama * Colombe's Birth- 
day.' The young Duchess, deserted by her friends, 
finds, in her dark moment of despair of human truth, 
her only help in the loyalty of one young advocate. 



COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 365 

This Valence finally declares that love for her has 
actuated his service. She loves him in return, yet 
the first knowledge of his love stirs in her no joy ; it 
touches her with keenest pain. . . . Thus personal joy 
in the offered love is merged for her in sorrow, that she 
has lost the broader, finer service." (** Womanhood 
in Modern Poetry," Poet-lore , Vol. I., p. 449, Octo- 
ber, 1889.) 

V. Topic for Paper, Classzvork, or Private Study. 
— The Triumph of Love in Colombe and Valence. 
(Act V.) 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion, — From 
Berthold's confidences to Melchior, would it appear 
that his scheme to marry Colombe was not so disin- 
terested as he would have it appear } Or is he sim- 
ply trying to baffle Melchior' s conclusions as to his 
character t 

In her interview with Berthold does it appear that 
Colombe is only interested in testing him as a man, 
and that the fact that she might be Empress weighs as 
nothing in the scale ? If he had appealed to her as a 
man, would it have proved her fickle to have accepted 
him, or merely that her love for Valence had only 
been incipient, and that her nature responded to the 
best she had yet encountered, but would respond more 
completely if a still higher nature were to meet hers ? 

In any case, is not the standpoint of Valence nobler, 
who recognizes love as the highest good, and that it is 
based on a spiritual kinship quite separable from ques- 
tions of service and disinterestedness, upon which 
Colombe seems inclined to think it based .? Do you 
not feel sure that he would have continued to love 
Colombe even if she had proved false to love ? 

In declaring that his desire would be only to evolve 



365 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

the love of one he loved even if it were for another, 
and in asking for the redress of the wrongs of Cleves, 
does Valence reach a point of unselfish devotion which 
should prove to Colombe that if service grows out of 
love and desires the reward of love, love, on the other 
hand, is capable of the most exalted sacrifice of self ? 

Does she finally learn the true value of love ? 

Does Berthold, also, rise to the highest possible to 
such a nature as his, when he waives the low-bred 
implications and selfish propositions of the courtiers 
and declares that her possible feeling for Valence is of 
no moment to him, who makes her a proposition for 
her to accept or not as she will, and should she 
decide for him would trust his honor with her im- 
plicitly ? 

To sum up these three characters, might it be said 
that Valence is a man of the highest ideals, who 
never wavers in the practical applications of them, and 
being such is the only one who criticises himself for 
not being absolutely disinterested in seeking Colombe, 
but who realizes that love is a gift that must not be 
dishonored ? Of Colombe can it be said that she has 
not yet developed beyond the stage where she is more 
interested in having other people fulfil what she con- 
ceives as their duty to her than in recognizing her 
duty to them ? Even to the end she assumes the 
position of the judge of others, though her possibilities 
of development are revealed in the fact that she 
chooses the highest when it is presented to her. She 
responds to high ideals, but does not seem capable of 
initiating them herself. Is this a popular ideal of 
woman's nature ? Of Berthold may it be said that 
he is a man whose course in life is fixed, and, though 
capable of appreciating higher ideals than his own, is 



COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 367 

suspicious of the possibility of such ideals existing, and 
incapable of following them himself? 

VI. Topic f 07' Paper ^ Classzuorky or Private Study. 
— Observations on the Art of this Drama. 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — Is this 
a drama of action or a drama of situation ? Is what 
action there is the result of the situations, or are the 
situations the result of the actions, or is there an inter- 
change of both ? 

Does the chief interest of the drama, however, 
centre upon the presentation of the characters and their 
development in relation to the various situations they 
are called upon to face ? 

Upon this point Mr. Symons says the play ** is 
mainly concerned with inward rather than outward 
action ; in which the characters themselves, what they 
are in their own souls, what they think of themselves, 
and what others think of them constitute the chief 
interest, the interest of the characters as they influence 
one another or external events being, however intense, 
in itself distinctly secondary." 

Do you find that the characters all stand out as dis- 
tinct personalities aside from their various attitudes to 
the problems involved ? What sort of references and 
allusions are used by them all respectively ? Does the 
language of Melchior betray the scholar ; of Valence, 
<;he man of wisdom, and the lover of the people as 
well as of Colombe ; of Berthold, the astute observer 
of the signs of the times as well as the victorious 
Ouke ; of Colombe, the girl made for happiness as well 
as the developing woman facing the problems of life ? 

Does the Duke especially suit' his manner to whom- 
ever he is talking ? (For allusions, see Camberzvell 
Browning, Vol. III., Notes, p. 321.) 



368 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Does Melchior or Sabyne have anything to do with 
the play, except as foils to show certain aspects of the 
characters of Berthold and Colombe respectively ? 
Does either of them influence any one's action ? 

What do you find to be the characteristics of the 
blank verse in this play, — very regular or with con- 
siderable variations in the accents and the endings of 
the hnes, etc. ? 

Are some of the speeches too long to be effective 
on the stage ? When you come to examine even the 
longest, do you feel that anything could be left out 
without seriously damaging the thought ? If this is 
so, might it not be possible to deliver them in such a 
way that they would seem entirely in place ? In 
modern conversation does not one person frequently 
talk at some length ? 

Professor Walker (** Greater Victorian Poets") 
says of this play that *Mt is a finer and subtler piece " 
than any of the plays preceding it. After having 
studied these preceding plays, would you consider 
this assertion, while showing an appreciation of this 
play, shows lack of appreciation in regard to the 
others? He goes on to say: *' The characters are 
interesting. Valence is grand with his fire and elo- 
quence and unselfishness. Berthold is a fine study of 
the man of the world, clear-sighted, selfish, yet capa- 
ble of generosity, and with something of a heart, 
though he is too deeply involved in afi^airs to follow 
its dictates. In his reading of others he makes mis- 
takes, through trusting too much to the selfish view. 
His confidant, Melchior, the student-observer of life, 
less entangled in affairs than Berthold, and less inclined 
to measure all with the measure that fits most, is right 
in the case of Valence and Colombe where Berthold 



COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 369 

is wrong. Colombe herself is rather the centre round 
which the others play than a figure of great interest 
for her own sake. Of the courtiers, Guibert is 
worthy of study. In him the struggles of a disposi- 
tion naturally good with the tendencies begotten of 
demoralizing surroundings and mean companionships 
are exceedingly well depicted. Contact with Valence 
rouses in him the better nature which would else have 
slept, and in the end he rises to the height of follow- 
ing the ruined fortunes of his mistress/' 

Is this a just appreciation except in the case of 
Colombe? Does Symons's appreciation of Colombe 
fit the case better ? — 

** Colombe, the veritable heroine of the drama, is, if 
not ' the completest full-length portrait of a woman 
that Mr. Browning has drawn,' certainly both one of 
the sweetest and one of the completest. Her character 
develops during the course of the play . . . and it 
leaves her a nobler and stronger, yet not less charm- 
ing woman than it found her. ... At the first and 
yet final trial, she is proved and found to be of 
noble metal. The gay girlishness of the young 
Duchess, her joyous and generous light heart ; her 
womanliness, her earnestness, her clear, deep, noble 
nature, attract us from the first words, and leave us, 
after the hour we have spent in her presence, with the 
inalienable uplifting memory that we have of some 
women we meet for an hour or a moment, in the 
world or in books." 

If this is true, is it Colombe's personality rather 
than her strength of character that produces the effect ? 

(For further opinions, see Introduction to Vol. III., 
Camherwell Brow7ii?ig, pp. xxi, xxv. j 



24 



Single Poem Studies: "Luria'* 



Page 
Vol. Text Note 

"Luria" "i ^95 3^4 



I. Topic for Paper, Classworky or Private Study. — 
Braccio's Decision. (Act I.) 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — The 
opinions of three different persons about Luria are 
given before he enters upon the scene. Do they 
differ greatly, and what light do they throw upon 
the nature of his abihty as a general and upon his 
character ? 

Is Braccio inconsistent in holding to the theory 
that self-interest is the master-impulse with mankind, 
when he speaks as he does to his Secretary (lines 
61-70)? 

On what is the Secretary's appeal based that 
Braccio should love himself, and therefore not condemn 
a guiltless man ? — on the fear that he may not be 
able to stand having so much power himself? 

Is the Secretary right in rating intellectual astute- 
ness as far more dangerous than any brute force can 
be? 

Why is Braccio, the champion of brain-rule, so 
complimentary to the brute-force embodied in Luria 
that he fears it ? Does this fact of his fearing it 
insinuate that he half unconsciously suspects in Luria 



LURIA 371 

the presence of a subtler force, and that, while he is 
belittling it, he really envies, as a rival, its possible 
influence over Florence ? 

What bearing upon the main event of this act, 
which is Braccio's decision against Luria, has the 
sketch of the Duomo with the Moorish front ? Is 
this striking architectural idea useful here in a double 
way to symbolize Luria' s love for Florence, and 
Braccio's fear of Luria for her sake ? (See Cam- 
berwell Browningy Vol. IlL, note 121, p. 330, for 
the evidence that Browning's dramatic fancy here hit 
upon an actual plan.) 

Do Luria' s presence and talk bear out the opinion 
of him derived from the others before he entered ? 

What significance has the second striking image of 
this act, the image of the tidal wave and the gulf 
stream subsiding inland (lines 320-330), as applied to 
Luria' s relation to Florence ? 

Is Domizia the most obscurely painted and least 
interesting of the characters of this act ? Or does 
she pique curiosity here, and promise development ? 

Is it clever or stupid in the astute Braccio to be 
so swayed by Luria' s talk ? Does he seize upon it 
as an excuse for the course he has inwardly resolved 
upon, or is it natural that he should be alarmed and 
convinced by any sign from Luria that he is less 
lacking in penetration than he has given him credit 
for being ? 

Is the outcome of the talk about Luria, the grudging 
praise of Puccio, the suspicious jealousy for Florence 
of Braccio, and the disinterested observation of him 
by the Secretary, well calculated to make us wary of 
him, or to make us see that his nature has a largeness 
far beyond theirs ? 



372 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Does this act throw light upon the quality of his 
intelligence, as well as upon the generosity of his 
nature ? What proofs of the artistic in him are 
given ? And is the evidence such as to show that 
his perceptions were lively and facile merely, or that 
his sympathies were genial ? In whom is the source 
of the action of this drama centred, as shown in this 
act ? 

II. Topic for Paper i Classworky or Private Study. 
— Luria's Decision. (Act II.) 

Queries for hivestigation afid Discussion. — Is 
Luria Braccio's opposite, or Husain ? Does Husain, 
that is, stand more for the racial and physical quality 
to which Braccio is opposed and against which he is 
working, than Luria does ? Why ? 

The last act gave an unfriendly outside view ot 
Domizia and of her place and aim in being near Luria 
(lines 172—184). How far does her own revelation of 
herself in this act agree with it ? Is justice or ven- 
geance her desire ? Is her revenge only for the sake 
of her house or also to tutor Florence ? 

What is told of Tiburzio, both in Act I. and II., 
before he arrives on the scene ? What is his office 
in the dramatic action ? 

Is *« Luria " too severely symmetrical in its struc- 
ture, having on the one side, in Act I., a movement 
centred in Braccio standing for Florence, and acting 
through Puccio against Luria ; and in Act II., on 
the other side, a counter-movement proceeding from 
Husain' s instinctive racial fears of the Florentines, and 
finding through Tiburzio, standing for Pisa, a means 
whereby Luria may circumvent Braccio's plot against 
him ? Or is this equally balanced dramatic action 
especially appropriate for a drama of this kind, in 



LURIA 373 

which the characters are few, typical, and ideal of 
their different kinds, and all intentionally subordinated 
to the revelation of a single exalted personality ? 

In being thus chastely fashioned — in strong con- 
trast, for example, to "The Return of the Druses," 
wherein events are not altogether so subordinated to 
the display of character, and wherein cross-purpose, sur- 
prise, and complex interwoven movements and public 
interests are brought visibly upon the stage — in being 
thus chastely fashioned, is **Luria" a proof, not of 
Browning's predilections for a precisely balanced 
dramatic form, but of his capacity to work out in- 
tentionally diverse dramatic forms ? 

Luria is appealed to on his most sensitive side when 
Tiburzio supposes that he, being an alien, will be 
ready to take revenge on Florence. But is his pride 
in being as true to Florence as one born her son 
could be, the real reason why he refuses to read the 
letter ? 

Does he doubt Tiburzio ? If not, why then does 
he wait and test his Florentines by actual interview 
before deciding ? Is it because he really is, as he 
wishes to be, half Florentine in cast of mind, and 
because he hopes to find in them some need for his 
native intuition which w^ill prove that he is capable 
of being of the deepest use to them yet, by supplying 
them with a quality they lack ? 

Is his conclusion, namely, to '' clench the obliga- 
tion " they relieve him from, to conquer evil by not 
resisting it, — or to resist it by spirit, not by force, 
— actually a conclusion born of a union of the intel- 
lectual and emotional qualities of human nature? 

What warrant is there for the supposition that 
Christ's doctrine of conquering malevolence by non- 



374 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

resistance is the fruit of a blending of typically West- 
ern and Oriental philosophy ? 

Are the main steps in the action of the drama skil- 
fully marked by the stage business of the letter ? 
Braccio's decision in Act I. is exemplified in his slow- 
tearing of the first letter, and sending this which in 
Act II. in the hands of Luria marks the second step 
in the story. How would Luria tear that paper 
when he bids the trumpet answer, — slowly .'' Does 
he hesitate ? 

III. Topic for Paper, Classworky or Private Study. 
— How will Florence reward Luria ? (Act III.) 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — Is Luria 
the only one of the characters who comes out in high 
relief in Act III.? 

How do Braccio and Puccio and Tiburzio, each 
in his own way, as well as Luria, show their 
mettle .'' 

Braccio, says Mr. Chadwick, in his paper on 
** Luria" {Poet-lore, Vol. VI., pp. 251-264, 
May, 1894, or same in ** Boston Browning Society 
Papers,'* pp. 249-263), is devoted to "a worthy- 
end — the good of Florence ... her safety, her 
pre-eminence. Nor does he stain his fair intentions 
with foul acts, if I may turn about Sir Thomas 
Browne. He is completely his own dupe. In argu- 
ing that Luria must abuse his power and victory he 
thinks that he is going on the broad sure ground, — 
* the corruption of man's heart.' Even if he had felt 
less confident of this, he would have given Florence 
and not Luria the benefit of his doubt. . . . Ques- 
tioning the obvious good of other men is pretty sure 
to find the flaw it seeks. . . . This is Braccio's sin. 
His is that casuist's return on the simpHcity, nay, the 



LURIA 375 

coherent unity of the moral sentiment, which paralyzes 
faith. . . . His defect, whatever Browning meant it 
to appear, was not excess of intellect or lack of heart, 
but that he had in him the mind of Rochefoucauld, 
and not * the mind of Christ.' " 

In Braccio, writes Professor H. M. Pancoast 
(*** Luria' : Its Story and Motive," Part II., Poet- 
lore, Vol. II., pp. 19-26), **we have the embodi- 
ment of the * cool instructed intellect.' The character 
is not only a natural one in itself, — it has deep his- 
toric truth. It was this very pride of pure intel- 
lect, the deification of mind and of culture, that chilled 
whatever there may have been of generous ardor or 
of religious aspiration in the Florentine civilization." 
Mr. J. A. Symonds's words on Macchiavelli he quotes 
again as ** singularly applicable to Browning's Braccio," 
in whom, also, may be traced " the spirit of an age 
devoid of moral sensibility, — penetration in analysis 
it has, but is deficient in faith, hope, enthusiasm, and 
stability of character. The dry light of the intellect 
determined their judgment of men, as well as their 
theories of government." Luria, by contrast, con- 
tinues Professor Pancoast, " stands beside the highest 
and most characteristic product of this Florentine 
civilization, the half- civilized Luria, in the integrity of 
his God-given manhood." 

Is the essence of the antithesis between these two 
in this drama, the antithesis of " heart against head, 
spontaneity against reflection, impulse against calcula- 
tion," as Mr. Chad wick says, or is it rather the 
antithesis between intellect unwarmed by sympathy, 
and the emotional nature enlightened and guided by 
reason and experience ? Would Husain and not 
Luria stand precisely in contrast to Braccio, if tlie 



376 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

opposition were drawn merely between heart on the 
one side and head on the other ? 

Is the contrast drawn between Luria and Braccio 
dependent further on an antithesis between the cor- 
porate and the individual life ? And does Luria's 
moral triumph over the principle for which Braccio 
stands, that the State is of more value than any one 
man, imply that the man is of more value than the 
State ? 

**The whole position taken by Braccio," says 
Professor Pancoast, *Ms substantially that of the school 
of historians of which perhaps Buckle is the first and 
Tolstoy the last conspicuous example, thinkers who 
are inclined to reduce to a minimum the value of the 
individual in human affairs. But to Browning, whose 
conception of life is not scientific but passionate, whose 
interest centres rather on the destiny of the single soul 
than on the progress of an impersonal social revolution, 
the inspired man is greater than institutions." 

May it again be questioned whether the marrow of 
the antithesis drawn between the individual and the 
corporate life consists merely in the exaltation of the 
** single soul " or the "inspired man " over the social 
collectivity ? May it be held that the instructive contrast 
made is rather between a Braccio' s love of Florence 
and a Luria's love ; and that Luria's is not less service- 
able to her, but more so, for the very reason that it is 
not inconsistent with individual integrity, and that it is 
not furthered by the suppression or subjection or 
belittlement in any way of the single soul of any 
one of its citizens, but by his utmost possible 
development .? 

Is Domizia's view really the precise opposite of 
Braccio' s, since she upholds the superiority of the 



LURIA 377 

individual over the State, and would have Luria teach 
Florence ; and is her social code any less erroneous in 
its emphasis on the one side than Braccio's on the 
other r 

Why does Luria pardon her ? Because she has 
intended to make use of him — just as Braccio has, 
though with a different aim in view — as a mere pawn 
in her plans with reference to Florence ? 

What is Luria's view, at the close of this act, of 
the servant's right to resent his reward from the city 
he loves ? Luckily, he stands visibly furnished, 
through Tiburzio's proposition, with unimpugnable 
power to smite back, so that if he decides to turn the 
other cheek it will not be misunderstood and taken as 
an evidence that he could do nothing else. 

Is it significant that he who is supposed by most 
commentators to be representative of sheer heart, 
always suspends definitive action till knowledge adds 
authorization to his intuitive perception of what the 
situation is going to be ? Braccio the astute is not so 
cautious as to wait until Luria's sentence had arrived 
before transferring the command to Puccio ; but does 
Luria forget that he is unauthorized till then to lay his 
office down ? 

But is this suspense of Luria's a dramatic device ; 
or is it more than that, — an effect useful at this point, 
but also based on the truth of Luria's character as 
shown throughout the play ? 

Is it, perhaps, meant to be intimated that thoroughly 
wise and effective action is a product, not of the brain, 
but of an instructed heart ? 

IV. Topic for Paper, Classwork, or Private Study. 
— Shall Luria punish Florence? (Act IV.) 

Queries for Investigatio?i and Discussion. — Does 



3/8 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Puccio's character grow in the course of the play ? 
Why ? Is he first to see the value of Luria's combina- 
tion of heart with brain, disinterestedness with ability ? 

What light does his rebuke, in this act, of the blood- 
less policy as senseless throw upon the situation ? 

What does Husain's advice to Luria contribute to 
this double question of the play at this juncture, — first, 
what Luria would best do, and, second, what is the 
inner meaning of his action as an exemplar for the 
Florentines ? 

Is Domizia altogether without majesty and right on 
her side in her demand that corporate Florence be 
taught the worth of man's cause? 

How is it that Luria's way of teaching the same 
lesson goes closer to the reformation of the evil ? In 
refraining from resenting the indignity to himself as a 
personal one, does he point out that what he does 
resent is the indignity which Florence forces upon 
any genuine service of her ? 

V. Topic for Paper i Classzuorky or Private Study. 
— The Punishment. (Act V.) 

Queries for I?westigatio?i and Discussion, — Is the 
fact that the reader or an audience know that Luria 
has taken poison when Act V. begins, a drawback to 
the interest of the conclusion ? 

What is it that is to be watched with interest in 
this act ? The effect on the other characters ? The 
unfolding of the ability and disinterestedness all along 
felt to be native to Luria ? Or is there still room for 
doubt as to his course ? 

In the series of dialogues between Luria and the 
different characters circling about him, what revela- 
tions are made of him, and how do they affect each of 
the Florentines ? 



LURIA • 379 

Was Puccio's talk with the Secretary in the last act 
effective in creating a little apprehension lest Luria 
might turn out to be the ** wise man" whom "op- 
pression made mad," as Puccio expresses it (Act IV. 
line 1 6) ? And although the taking of the poison re- 
assures one that Luria loves Florence, does it make it 
sure that he will not give her other cause to mourn him ? 

What sort of cause for this does he really give her, 
first as general, in the interview with Puccio, then 
as Minister of Justice, in the interview with the 
Secretary ? 

If these two interviews are both conducted in the 
interest of Florence, first, against external foes, and, 
second, against more insidious internal foes of her own 
blood, but perhaps created by her own injustice, how 
are the remaining interviews made useful to her ? 

The first two are planned by Luria, and he sum- 
mons Puccio and the Secretary to him to instruct them, 
as it were, in his last will for Florence. The others 
are not of his summoning. Yet in what sense are 
they the result of his initiative .? 

In what different ways do they testify to his life- 
work for Florence, and what principles of true 
patriotism and right relationing of the citizen to the 
State do they bring out ? 

"ToDomizia," says Professor Pancoast, in the 
article already cited, — ** and here we touch the. vital 
purpose of the play — to Domizia it seems that he 
has . . . retaught to the hard dry brain of the North 
the value of those deep and holy feelings which had 
been lost in the pride of the intellect. Her answer to 
Luria' s lament over what seems to him his neglected 
mission sums up the main thought of the play. She 
speaks of Luria — of one who has 



380 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

' brought fresh stuff 
For us to mould, interpret and prove right, — 
New feeling fresh from God, which, could we know 
C the instant, where had been our need of it ? 
Whose life re-teaches us what life should be, 
What faith is, loyalty and simpleness.' 

I have no doubt that in this speech we have not 
merely the utterance of Domizia, but the deUberate 
conviction of the poet himself speaking through her." 

But does the poet, by speaking not only through 
Domizia but through all his characters, and by let- 
ting their own natures shape their utterance, designedly 
convince us of a little larger truth even than this, — 
namely, that in such sympathetic appreciation of an 
opposite nature as Luria has shown for the Florentine 
nature without the renunciation of his own distinctive 
native gifts and bent, — consists the mission of each 
person to every other which enables not only the 
right development of each, but the best possible 
patriotism and social progress ? 

Is this the inner meaning of democracy which Italy, 
and above all Florence, at the head of her cities, was 
so near to in the Renaissance period, and missed for 
lack of, so disastrously ? 

Did Luria love Domizia ? Was lov^e only pos- 
sible between them now ? What pathos do their last 
words add to the story ? 

Why did the poet have to poison Luria ? Could 
he rightly have made the play end happily ? 

Is Tiburzio's testimony to be taken as the poet's 
own moral inference ? And does it mean that a man 
of genius and insight is of more value than the mass of 
men in himself; or in making his superior value de- 
pendent on his service to mankind, as a model of a 



LURIA 381 

completer life than theirs, does it mean that the devel- 
opment of each man's highest capability is the supreme 
concern for a nation ? 

How does such a social moral as this apply to the 
present political situation ? 

Is it clear how Braccio and Husain are convinced ? 

Is this play one that reaches success through eliciting 
from its auditors a kindred temper to that of its central 
character, marked by a glow of sympathetic intelli- 
gence and intuition rather than by any external excite- 
ment over its events ? 

Is its lack of humor against it? Or would humor 
obtrude here a jarring note ? 

Is its lack of any traits of wickedness or wilful per- 
versity, ordinary carnal-mindedness, or petty human 
quirks of any sort, — especially is its lack of personal 
love-relations unusual in Browning ? 

Is the absence of such human touches a mistake, or 
is it v^ell calculated to enhance the extraordinary ideal- 
istic high-mindedness of the piece ; even its least lofty 
characters being in earnest and conscious of their 
bearings ? 

Yet can " Luria " be called cold or statuesque while 
it is so irradiated with enthusiasm ? 

** If not the best of Browning's dramas," wrote 
James Russell Lowell, in the North American Review 
for 1848, 'Mt is certainly one of the most striking in 
its clearness of purpose, the energetic rapidity of its 
movement, the harmony of its details, the natural 
attraction with which they all tend toward and at last 
end in the consummation, and in the simplicity and 
concentration of its tragic element." 

Browning himself said of '* Luria," in writing to 
Elizabeth Barrett in 1846, that it was "for a purely 



382 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

imaginary stage, — very simple and straightforward." 
And while he was composing the play, he spoke to her 
of" my Braccio and Puccio (a pale discontented man) 
and Tiburzio (the Pisan, good true fellow, this one), 
and Domizia, the Lady ... all these with their 
worldly wisdom and Tuscan shrewd ways ; and for 
me the misfortune is, I sympathise just as much with 
these as with golden-hearted Luria." 

Later, when Miss Barrett was reading as far as the 
fourth act, she asked, '*Is he to die so F Can you 
mean it ? ... I can scarcely resign myself to it even 
as an act of necessity ... I mean to the act, as 
Luria's act, whether it is final or not — the act of 
suicide being so unheroical. But you are a dramatic 
poet and right, perhaps, where, as a didactic poet, 
you would have been wrong, and after the first shock, 
I begin to see that your Luria is the man Luria, and 
that his * sun ' lights him so far and not farther than 
so, and to understand the natural reaction of all that 
generous trust and hopefulness, what naturally it would 
be. Also, it is satisfactory that Domizia, having put 
her woman's part off to the last, should be too late 
with it — it will be a righteous retribution. I had 
fancied that her object was to isolate him, to make his 
military glory and national recompense ring hollowly 
to his ears, and so commend herself, drawing back 
the veil." 

To this. Browning replied that he had wished just 
those feeHngs to be in her mind about Domizia and 
Luria's death. "The last act throws light back on 
all, T hope. Observe only, that Luria would stand, if 
I have plied him effectually with adverse influences, in 
such a position as to render any other end impossible 
without the hurt to Florence which his religion is to 



LURIA 383 

avoid inflicting — passively awaiting, for instance, the 
sentence and punishment to come at night, would as 
surely inflict it as taking part with her foes. His aim 
is to prevent the harm she will do herself by striking 
him, so he moves aside from the blow." 

Again, after reading the fifth act, Elizabeth Barrett 
wrote of how she had been possessed by **Luria,*' 
'* moved and affected without the ordinary means and 
dialect of pathos," by its "calm attitude of moral 
grandeur "... Ah ! Domizia! would it hurt her to 
make her more a woman — a little — I wonder ! " 
Browning acknowledged in reply that her special 
color as he first conceived the play had faded. *' It 
was but a bright hne, and the more distinctly deep 
that it was so narrow. One of my half dozen words 
on my scrap of paper * pro memoria ' was, under the 
* Act V.' * she loves ' — to which I could .not bring 
it, you see ! Yet the play requires it still ... I 
meant that she should propose to go to Pisa with him 
and begin a new life. ... I will try and remember 
what my whole character did mean — it was, in two 
words, understood at the time by * panther's beauty.' " 



Single Poem Studies: "A Soul's 
Tragedy " 

Page 
Vol. Text Note 
*' A Soul's Tragedy " ..... . . . iii 257 332 

I. Topic for P apery Classworky or Private Study. 
— Chiappino's Character Revealed by Circumstances. 
(For sketch of the story, see Ca?nberwell Brozv?ii?igy 
Notes, as given above.) 

Queries for Investigatioji a?id Discussioji. — In 
Chiappino's first conversation with Eulalia does he 
give the impression that he is not so much a martyr 
to the truth as he would have Eulalia think ? 

His comparisons between Luitolfo and himself, his 
irritation at the favors he has received from Luitolfo 
indicate, do thev not, that his present mood is due to 
wounded vanity rather more than to disappointment 
at his failure to realize his high ideals.? 

Should you say that his principal desire had been 
to put himself above other men and make himself con- 
spicuous for his own self-gratification instead of with 
the idea of bettering society t 

Does it seem at all probable that a man of his 
evidently egotistical stamp would hesitate to express 
his love for any one upon the grounds which he 
informs Eulalia had deterred him } Is it possible that 
his love for her was largely a feeling of rivalry toward 



A SOUL'S TRAGEDY 385 

his friend ? On the other hand, might it be argued 
that his schemes for the regeneration of the State were 
sincere, but that constant failure to achieve any suc- 
cess, and finally the taking of his love away from him 
by the man who seemed to succeed everywhere when 
he failed, and who emphasized this fact by acts of 
friendship lightly done, — caused his patience to give 
out, and, so, he took a natural if not very exalted 
comfort in regarding himself as a martyr and railing 
against his best friends ? 

Although Chiappino means to belittle Luitolfo to 
Eulaha in this talk, is it not easy to see that he 
has been a true friend to Chiappino, and that his 
character is that of a man prone to see good in others, 
and who, though he does not think the government 
perfect, believes that better results will come through 
working quietly and tactfully for reforms than by the 
methods of the revolutionist such as Chiappino uses r 

Does Eulalia show any signs of being affected by 
Chiappino' s declaration of love to her, combined with 
his criticisms of Luitolfo, and his assertions that she 
does not love Luitolfo ? 

What may he said of Chiappino' s argument that 
'* there's no right nor rearon in the world" unless 
love given calls out a return of love ? Does Eulalia 
seem to give credence to this remark of his by reply- 
ing that she did not know he loved her ? 

Chiappino's ill- humor is at its height, when Lui- 
tolfo enters and belies all the former's ill-natured 
criticism by announcing that he has just killed the 
Provost. Does Chiappino save Luitolfo and take his 
deed upon himself for love of Luitolfo, or because he 
sees a chance h.ere to cover himself with glory? 

Was Luitolfo' s dazed manner due to cowardice, as 
25 



386 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Chiappino tries to insinuate, or to the fact of the 
natural excitement following a deed which must in 
itself have been most distasteful to a man of Luitolfo's 
pacific disposition ? 

Could anything but his absent-mindedness have 
excused Luitolfo's letting himself be saved by 
Chiappino ? 

From Eulaha's speech as she and Chiappino stand 
there alone awaiting the approaching populace, would 
it appear that this last deed of Chiappino's had made 
a profound impression upon her ? Does she seem to 
think dying with this hero preferable to living with 
Luitolfo ? 

Is Chiappino at all occupied with Eulalia at this 
point ? or is he thinking only of himself as the hero 
of the occasion ? 

If the play ended here, and Chiappino was to be 
judged by this sacrifice of his Hfe, would the ver- 
dict be that, in spite of his egotism and vanity, he was 
a noble fellow ; or that this was a crowning piece of 
egotism, and that for the sake of the notoriety of dying 
a martyr he could willingly give up life ? 

Now begins the test of Chiappino's sincerity in the 
unexpected change given to the situation by the fact 
that instead of the guards seeking justice upon the 
murderer of the Provost it is the revolted populace 
which comes and which regards him as their savior. 
Chiappino knows what he ought to do, but gives a 
reason for acting otherwise. Do you think this a 
sincere reason, or does he evolve it in order to salve 
his own conscience and answer the criticism of Eula- 
lia's eyes } Or is he now, and has he always been 
deceived as to his own nature ? 

From Luitolfo's conversation with the bystanders 



A SOUL'S TRAGEDY 387 

in the second act, how does it appear Chiappino has 
been following up his first step in deceit ? From 
Luitolfo's aside (line 205), is it made clear that 
Eulalia is in league with Ogniben to lead Chiappino 
on to reveal himself fully, and that she tells Luitolfo 
that Chiappino is in urgent danger, in order to find 
out whether Luitolfo, still faithful, will immediately 
come to the rescue of his friend ? 

Luitolfo implies (line 36) that he had received dailv 
intelligence from some sure friend of how matters were 
proceeding. His friend had evidently told him that 
the Provost was not dead, but did he know of Chiap- 
pino' s ambition toward the Provostship ? If he had, 
would he have exclaimed, he must confront Chiap- 
pino and Eulalia before he can believe they have been 
keeping him away in order to carry out the scheme 
outlined by the bystanders ? May we conclude that 
the friend was Eulalia, and that she has been playing 
a part with both men, in order to bring things to 
a point where it can be proved to her own and every 
one's else satisfaction that Chiappino is a fraud at 
bottom, and that Luitolfo is the honorable, truthful 
man ? 

In his arguments in defence of his actions does 
Chiappino still deceive himself as to his own pur- 
poses ? Is he so blinded by his own egotism that he 
really imagines himself to be acting in a highly praise- 
worthy manner, and that his vision has actually 
become enlarged ? 

He throws off, first his principles, then his love, 
then his friend, and in each instance produces an 
argument in defence of his action. Can anything be 
said in favor of his first argument that if you cannot 
accomplish your ideal of a state, it is well to use the 



388 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

old methods, and through them approach a little 
nearer the ideal ? Might the good of such a course 
depend upon the sincerity of the person following it, 
or would it be altogether evil on account of its com- 
promise with the ideal ? Is there anything to be said 
in defence of Chiappino's argument that his concep- 
tion of love has widened ? Had it really widened, or 
did he show himself incapable of appreciating love at 
all in its highest and widest sense ? His argument for 
throwing off his friend shows him at his lowest — 
why ? 

The scene following here is a sarcastic defence of 
Chiappino's action by Ogniben. Should men be 
judged by their promises rather than by their perform- 
ances, as Ogniben says ? Might it depend upon 
whether a man strove for his ideal sincerely and yet 
failed, or whether he repudiated his ideal entirely ? 
Little Bindo, for example, performed much, though 
not all, while Chiappino performed nothing. 

Is Ogniben right when he says the nature that can 
respond to another nature at every point is the greater 
of the two ? 

Is he truly carrying out Chiappino's principles 
when he advises him to give the best of himself to his 
love ? 

Is Ogniben right when he says that differences con- 
sist more in the form of expression of a truth than in 
its essence ? This, however, does not apply to 
Chiappino's case, for is there not a fundamental differ- 
ence between government through the consent of the 
governed, and government through the authority of 
the governor ? Could they be called different expres- 
sions of the same truth ? 

Is there a certain amount of truth in Ogniben's 



A SOUL'S TRAGEDY 389 

contention that progress comes in the long run through 
the opposition to progress as well as through those 
who seek to change the present system of things ? 
Does the fact that you recognize how your antagonist 
is helping things on excuse you from strenuous work 
on your own side, as Ogniben insinuates to Chiappino ? 
Chiappino catching at the bait, Ogniben lets him 
down gendy by declaring that a due proportion 
should be observed between the amount of good seen 
in the antagonist and the greater amount to be recog- 
nized on one's own side. How otherwise could one 
have an ideal ? 

Is Chiappino, when he finds the emancipated slave 
so disgusting for adopting the methods of the oppres- 
sors, aware that he is criticising himself? 

Ogniben replies by laughing in his sleeve at the 
democracy of men of genius, and ironically declares 
that since they pull down God, there is some hope of 
their being saved at the last day because they put 
themselves up instead. Does Chiappino take Ogniben 
in earnest about this ? 

During the latter part of this conversation does 
Chiappino begin to suspect that Ogniben is fooling 
him r Or is he so completely fooled that he forgets 
to defer to Ogniben and falls into his accustomed habit 
of setthng ethical problems ? 

Is it natural that when he discovers himself com- 
pletely unmasked he should have nothing to say ? Or 
does he really hesitate when it is a question of bringing 
Luitolfo to justice ? 

Was Eulalia jusdfied for the. end she had in view — 
the vindication of Luitolfo — in misleading Chiappino 
as she must have done ? By so doing would she not 
give Chiappino good cause for criticism of her ? 



390 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Although Luitolf3 is admirable for his honesty and 
faithfulness and bravery, does he give the impression of 
lacking the power of initiative ? 

II. Topic for Paper y Classzuorky or Private Study, 
— Artistic Aspects of the Play. 

Queries for Investigatiori and Discussion. — As the 
play has but two acts, can it be called a drama ? 

Although it does not follow the approved model for 
a drama, it may be said to have certain dramatic quali- 
ties ; for example, the first act leads up to a fine situation 
both scenically and spiritually. Chiappino seems to 
reach the climax of possibilities in his character, when 
all is suddenly changed by the unexpected action of 
the populace. Luitolfo is for a moment eclipsed in 
Chiappino' s glory, Eulalia is for a moment dazzled. 
In the second act there is a parallel motive. Chiappino 
is on the point of attaining worldly success, when 
Ogniben acts in an unexpected manner and Chiappino 
is now eclipsed ; Luitolfo comes from under the cloud. 
Eulalia gives her undivided allegiance to Luitolfo. 

The conversations between Chiappino and Eulalia 
and that between Chiappino and Ogniben are perhaps 
too long to be thoroughly dramatic, but are they not 
wonderfully clever as reflecting the personality of the 
respective characters ? Does the scene between Lui- 
tolfo and the bystanders lack in dramatic effective-' 
ness, yet have its own sort of effectiveness in showing 
by slight hints what has passed during Luitolfo' s 
absence, and in revealing further the character of the 
populace, of Ogniben and of Chiappino ? (For further 
remarks on Ogniben, see programme ** The Prelate.") 

Is it fitting that the first act should be written in 
poetic form and the second in prose form .? 

Is the language of the play rich in allusions or 



A SOULS TRAGEDY 391 

poetic imagery ? (See Camberwell Brownings Vol. 
III., Notes, p. 332.) 

Mr. Symons considers that in this play Chiappino 
fills and possesses the scene ; that, of the other char- 
acters, " Eulalia is an observer, Luitolfo a foil, Ogniben 
a touchstone." 

Although Eulalia does not appear much in the 
action, do you not get the impression that she had a 
great deal to do during that month in bringing Chi- 
appino to his just deserts ? 

Mr. Fotheringham thinks Ogniben the true hero of 
the piece, and that the piece is not a play, but forcibly 
dramatic. '' Ogniben is the most definite impersona- 
tion in the dramas. The interest is in the characters ; 
the development and catastrophe are in the soul, not 
in events, and the incidents are clearly invented to 
present this." 

While there are other just as definite impersonations 
as Ogniben, may it be said that Brow^ning has drawn 
no other character so full of cool, cynical humor allied 
w^ith intellectual subtlety ? 



Single Poem Studies : " In a 
Balcony " 

Page 
Vol. Text Note 
'* In a Balcony " v loi 302 

Topic for Paper ^ Classzuorky or Private Study. — 
The Relation of the Characters to the Crisis. 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — What 
starts the action in "In a Balcony"? Asking 
the Queen for consent to Norbert's marriage with 
Constance ? Or is it the mode of asking her as- 
sent which gave rise to the difficulties of the second 
situation, and thence to the tragic cHmax ? 

There are three distinct situations in this little play. 
The first is brought out in the opening love-scene 
between Norbert and Constance ; the second, in the 
Queen's interview with Constance ; the third, in the 
relations of the Queen and the lovers, leading directly 
to the coming of the guard and to the lovers' last 
kiss. How are these three situations made to in- 
fluence one another successively ? 

Is there much that is necessary for the auditor to 
know of what took place before the scene opens in 
order to understand the story ? What is it, and how 
is knowledge of it conveyed ? Why should Con- 
stance tell Norbert what he knows as well as she, 
that he is minister, the Que>,'n's favorite, having done 



IN A BALCONY 393 

a wonderful year's work, etc. (lines 51—62)? Is 
this a natural part of her speech for her present aim ? 
What else comes out revealing the situation ? 

What share of responsibility has each of the three 
characters in the issue ? 

Did the wish of Constance for Norbert's future 
worldly success mean that she did not want him to 
marry her at all ? Her speech (lines 19-38) may be 
construed how ? — that she loves him so much that 
she does not wish to handicap his brilliant future by 
having him give her an unnecessary name ? Did she 
want him to marry the Queen ? Did she prefer, at 
least, their '* long-planned chance-meetings," '* deep 
telegraphs," etc. to marriage? Or did she simply 
fear to give up this secret but assured mutual love for 
a mere name at too great a risk ? Does she therefore 
only desire him so diplomatically to manage his 
request for her of the Queen that it shall not entail 
upon him any loss of distinction ? 

She claims that she loves the Queen and under- 
stands her, and that she can be generous but not so 
easily just. Does she understand herself as well, and 
how does her dictum that women hate a debt as men 
a gift apply to her own self here ? Does she want 
to repay the Queen for her ** justice" in taking her 
up because she was the Queen's kinswoman ; and if 
she had less consciousness of that as a debt, would she 
have been more direct in her policy now ? 

Is she right in saying that if she could do the ask- 
ing she could manoeuvre it cleverly ? In that case 
is the tragedy to follow all Norbert's fault for his 
clumsy management ? — Or hers for having a crooked 
policy ? Or is it most hers for intervening and over- 
ruling another sort of nature to do her way ? Is 



394 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

indirect management the besetting sin of women ? 
From this and the kindred feminine tendency to self- 
sacrifice, does the fault of Constance come which now 
starts the tragedy ? 

But ought Norbert to have consented to adopt her 
way ? Is it natural for men to take ruling from a 
woman in this way (lines 330-338) when they 
would in no other more rational way be persuaded to 
a given view ? 

If such self-sacrifice and indirect influence as 
characterizes Constance's action are usual with 
women, has social life culdvated this in them till it 
has become second nature, or is it instinctive ? Should 
it be reformed ? Can it be ? 

Does the Queen prove to be what Constance thinks 
she is ? 

She comes, first of all, after the mistaken inter- 
view with Norbert, to Constance, ready not to credit 
her hopes of his love till Constance has spoken. 
Why does she appeal first to Constance ? Is this 
wise and clear-sighted, and also ajffectionate, loyal, 
and straightforward ? 

When Constance then responds as she does to the 
Queen's trust, the tragedy is let loose. She could 
have done all she had done without doing the Queen 
the wrong of misleading her here. Or can anything 
be said in defence of her reply ? She could have with- 
drawn from her course here ; this opportunity having 
been given her. Why does she not ? For Norbert's 
sake ? How far had she a right to mislead another 
for the sake of the man she loved .? How far had 
she a right to commit him to what was not true for 
the sake of his material success ? Is this reply of 
Constance's the crisis of the foregoing action ? 



IN A BALCONY 395 

Perhaps Constance is obtuse here, and does not 
take it in that the Queen has been misled. If so 
her **True" is stupid rather than cruel, to the 
Queen at least. Judging from Constance's words 
during the rest of the scene with the Queen, should 
it be considered that she was aware of where her 
policy was now leading ? Is her surprise only due 
to the revelation of the Queen's fervid heart ? Was 
it this only — the Queen's love — which she had not 
counted upon ? 

What is the worth of Constance's <* He shall" 
(Hne 581) ? Has the Queen so revealed the strength 
of soul to love within her, that Constance is really 
abashed by her own proved inferiority and feels that 
this nature has indeed regal rights .? Or does she 
only pity her? 

What concern for Norbert has she here ? Is she 
really lacking in sincere love for him ? Is her re- 
nunciation of him the product of mixed motives, — 
self-sacrifice both for his sake and the Queen's, joined 
with the knowledge that she already has his love, 
which nothing can take from her, and that she can 
well afford not to have everything, since she 'has so 
much ? Is her decision, then, ** noble and magnani- 
mous," as has been said, marked by that ** altruism 
of motherhness " which is the inherent trait *'in all 
good women" ? Or is it the decision of a ** radi- 
cally insincere and inconstant " nature, as has also 
been said ? Or rather is it the natural decision of a 
more immature yet perhaps also more complex 
nature than that of either Norbert or the Queen, 
and of a nature, moreover, whose dependent posi- 
tion in life and at the court necessarily made it a 
less self-poised and masterly nature than either of 



396 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

theirs, but one even more prone to manage to have 
its way r 

•Constance, says Mr. Wedmore (as quoted by Mr. 
Symons), is " a character peculiarly wily for goodness, 
curiously rich in resource for unalloyed and inexperi- 
enced virtue." Mr. Symons adds his own view of 
her love, which he thinks was true and intense up to 
the measure of her capacity ; but her nature was, in- 
stinctively, less outspoken and truthful than Norbert's, 
more subtle, more reasoning. At the critical moment 
she is seized by a whirl of emotions, and, with very 
feminine but singularly unloverHke instinct, she re- 
solves, as she would phrase it, to sacrifice herself ^ not 
seeing that she is insulting her lover by the very notion 
of his accepting such a sacrifice. Her character has 
not the pure and steadfast nobility of Norbert's, but it 
is truly devoted and very human. The Queen, un- 
like Constance, but like Norbert, is simple and single 
in nature. She is a tragic and intense figure, at once 
pathetic and terrible. The part allotted to her is as 
vivid, poignant, and affecting as words can make it. 
1 am not aware that the peculiarly pregnant motive — 
the hidden longing for love in a starved and stunted 
nature, clogged with restrictions of state and ceremony, 
harassed and hampered by circumstances, and by the 
weight of advancing years — the passionate longing 
suddenly met, as it seems, with reward, and breaking 
out into a great flame of love and ardour, only to be 
rudely and finally quenched — I am not aware that 
this motive has ever elsewhere been worked out in 
dramatic poetry. As here developed, it is among the 
great situations in literature." 

Of Norbert Mrs. Alice Kent Robertson writes {Poet- 
lore^ Vol. II., pp. 310-314, June, 1890): *'He 



IN A BALCONY 397 

is an exceptional man in this — that love and not ambi- 
tion is his ruling motive. . . . Through the intricacies 
of state-craft [he] has worked his way, keeping one 
aim in view . . . retaining his simplicity and integrity, 
and finally through love alone, is enticed to a mode 
of action foreign to his nature. . . . Not a brilliant 
man this, perhaps, but what is better, a purposeful 
one . . . the advocate of truth as the strong thing, 
he illumines by its steady beam the sinuous path of 
human endeavor, thereby cheering the heart and re- 
viving one's hope of the heroic. Constance is the 
character upon which discussion centres, because so 
very human, therefore complex, therefore interesting. 
. . . Her critics are too eager to prove her either 
good or bad, drawing too arbitrary an ethical line 
through her fascinatingly complex personality. She is 
neither saint nor sinner, but, like a large proportion 
of the human race, compounded of both. Human 
nature should first be * interesting,' says Matthew 
Arnold. Whatever may be said for or against Con- 
stance she meets this requirement." 

But does Constance grow in stature and in capacity 
for love of a riper sort, like that of Norbert and the 
Queen in the course of the final scene with them ? 
Through what steps does she attain to this climax of 
her capacity for love ? What does she mean when 
Norbert returns by telling him she is his now^ and 
not until now, — that, before, he was hers ? 

Does Norbert understand her present mood till 
the Queen 'enters and the dialogue reveals it ? How 
large a share does the Queen have in this dialogue and 
in ridding the situation of its difficulties before she 
leaves ? Is her silence, from the close of her reply to 
Norbert after being directly appealed to by him, a 



398 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

magnificently significant dramatic effect, because so 
true to nature r Or is it too true for art, giving not 
enough chance for the actress of the part to make 
known to an audience her revulsion of feeling, from 
which the tragic conclusion springs ? Should she 
have been made to swoon ? Why not ? Or to say 
some terse word ? What assistance has Browning lent 
the facial expression and attitude, which must be the 
actress's only means of interpreting her feeling here, 
in Norbert's words (hne 885) ; and is this trifling 
observation clew enough to what is passing within 
the Queen's dizzy silence? 

Do Norbert and Constance anticipate what the 
Queen's silent departure is presently to mean for 
them ? 

Can the Queen be blamed for the tragedy ? 

Mast personal love always be selfish ? Is this what 
Constance learns ? Or is it that it must be individual, 
and take no liberties with the natures of other indi- 
vidual souls, either for love's sake or for pity ? 

Is the choice of imagery, the fluency of the blank 
verse, such as to fit this little dramatic episode with 
especial harmony ? 



Single Poem Studies : " Childe 
Roland " 



Childe Roland" . . 
Compare " Prospice " 



Page 
Vol. Text 


Note 


iv 277 
V 217 


398 
314 



Topic for Paper, Classwork, or Private Study. — 
The Mood and Symbolism of Childe Roland's Quest. 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — In the 
story of this knight's quest are the incidents shadowy 
and indefinite, or are they realistic ? 

Is there any picture in the series portraying the 
stages of his progress from beginning to end of the 
poem which is not visually vivid ? Do you derive 
definite particulars as to shape, color, quality, sur- 
roundings, and associations ? 

Yet does this graphically presented journey at any 
point make you feel that it should be taken as a literal 
narrative of events that once really occurred ? 

And, on the other hand, while it is not to be taken 
as an actual journey, although all its scenes are sharply 
outlined to the eye, do you feel, either, that these 
qualities of definiteness make it present an intellectually 
distinct conception to the eve of the mind ? 

Yet are not the scenes of the poem as vivid to you 
emotionally as they are visually ? 

If this is the effect of the poem on you, namely, 
to see its incidents and 'feel them vividly, but neither 



400 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

to see them intellectually with unmistakable definite- 
ness and logical coherence, nor to conceive of them as 
actual occurrences, should you not conclude that the 
artistic design of the poem is to present images awaken- 
ing sensations and impressions, instead of thoughts or 
facts, and in this insensible way to convey the mood 
and inspirational atmosphere of a series of personal 
spiritual experiences tending toward a climax of as- 
piration in Childe Roland's will ? 

What do you think of the " hoary cripple " of the 
opening stanza ? Need he be taken as an allegorical 
figure representing the sceptic in religion, the cynic of 
love, the genius of the materialistic nineteenth century, 
the herald of death or disease, a tempter to agnosti- 
cism or atheism, or vivisectionist medical science or 
anv other particular allegorical type among the many 
such emblematic ideas suggested, so much as an ex- 
ternal embodiment of the hero's inward feeling ? 

Is all the imagery here just as much a token of the 
speaker's mental attitude as the air-drawn dagger is of 
Macbeth' s, when it marshalled him the way that he 
was going ? 

Is the artistic usefulness of the vivid picturing here, 
therefore, to induce the right impression of Childe 
Roland's mood of imperturbable disillusionment in the 
face of which he sets out on the ominous plain to end 
his quest for the Round Tower ? 

Instead of this undertaking being mistaken, sinful, 
or weak, as it has been assumed to be in order to 
make it suit the various allegorical interpretations, is it 
not brave, intrepid to the last degree ? 

Does it not make the whole idea of the quest in- 
consistent if it is supposed from the outset to be one 
which ought not to have been undertaken ? And is 



CHILDE ROLAND 401 

so persistent a pursuit of the Tower, as a chosen quest, 
reckless of risk, disdainful of hatred, the attitude of a 
weakling, a self-indulgent spiritless soul ? 

Is the presentation of views of human nature in the 
poem, — the effect upon the sick man (lines 25—36) 
of his friends taking him for as good as dead already, 
the memories of school-fellows turned to for cheer 
(lines 85—103), becoming a mockery, — a presenta- 
tion of relative value to the hero's mood, rather than 
of intrinsic value in the story ? The mood of deso- 
lation within him, the subjective renunciation of 
cherished illusions in preference to a cheat, — are 
these what they portend ? 

The presentation of Nature, too, growing as it 
does from the merely barren to the disgustingly 
hideous, from the oppressively monotonous to the 
suddenly sinister, brutal, and cruel, the alternately 
sickening, unmeaning, and malicious, — is all this 
significant of the successive outlooks of one aware of 
all life's disheartenments and mocking contradictions 
who is yet bent upon testing all to the full, without 
swerving from the course ? 

Does the final scene depict a mood of failure and 
warning to others, then, or of spiritual victory and 
incitement to others ? 

Why did he address his quest from the first to the 
Tower, if merely to find it meant disaster ? Why had 
he spent a lite in training for the sight (line 180) ? 

Is the proper end of his quest, then, to attest human 
capacity, — ta win a sense of energy from the most 
poignant comprehension of what despair and failure 
mean for all humanity and has meant to its chosen 
heroes ? One proof in his own person, then, of 
human valor to withstand such spiritual fatalism would 
26 



402 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

redeem the despair of all his faltering predecessors and 
bear witness to all men of the ability of humankind. 
Is this what Childe Roland did as he set the slug- 
horn to his lips ? 

Will any more specific meaning so perfectly suit 
the poem and satisfy so many readers that it may be 
accepted as its complete purport as consistently and 
unanimously, for example, as the allegory of Bunyan's 
"Pilgrim's Progress" suits that graphic but unmis- 
takably allegorical journey ? 

Do any of the following theories satisfy the dtmands 
the poem makes upon your sympathy ? 

Mr. Kirkman, at one of the early meetings of the 
London Browning Society, considered that ** Childe 
Roland " was suggested by the ballad of Burd Ellen 
referred to in Shakespeare, but had an allegorical 
aim. For him it was ** the quintessence of cultured 
thought upon death ... a continuance of the old 
* Ballad Romance of Childe Roland ' found in 
R. Jamieson's 'Illustrations of Northern Antiquities' 
... a few strong shreds of the traditional romance as 
warp . . . woven in with ... his own wondrously 
subtle and consistent woof ... * Childe Roland ' 
may very probably have more than one meaning ; one it 
must have, and that one must needs be something in 
human experience. . . . There are overwhelming 
reasons for concluding that this poem describes after the 
manner of an allegory the sensations of a sick man very 
near to death. Browning, who has thrown his whole 
individuality into so many varieties of human life and 
development of souls, throws himself with all the 
placid almost unsuspected might of his most subtle 
genius into the final stage of human development. . . . 
There is the most close resemblance between * Pros- 



CHILDE ROLAND 403 

pice ' and * Childe Roland.' They are constructed 
upon the same keynote. One might be called a pro- 
logue to the other. . . . Of all subjects of thought 
which combine the lights of science and religion we 
need healthy thought on Death. Physiologists give 
us the physical aspect of it ; divines for the most 
part retain the erroneous view of it as the king of 
terrors, ignoring it as the necessary result of organiza- 
tion. The moral aspect of it is reduced neither to 
moral system, to peace, nor to practicability. The 
death of the soul is altogether confounded with the 
physical dissolution of the body. . . . This poem is the 
only philosophical account of death free from the poor 
perishable stubble of conventional phraseology." (Lon- 
don Browning Society Papers, Part III., pp. *2l-*24.) 
Treating of ** Browning's * Childe Roland ' and its 
Danish source," M. Sears Brooks follows a similar 
track, finding a moral suggestion in the Dark Tower of 
the unknown invisible world which is nearer than we 
think. "Do not the crippled intelligences of this 
world inspire us with doubt even while pointing in the 
right direction ? . . . After a life spent in training for 
the sight, he sees the Tower only at the moment of 
dissolution. . . . The fear of death and the bitterness of 
death.is past. He set the slug-horn to his lips, and 
dauntless blew the note of victory I Who but Brown- 
ing could lead us thus to the gates of the Eternal ? 
The spiritual conception of the quest, call it fancy or 
what not, with which Browning has clothed this 
thought, is indefinite and disjointed only to those who 
fail to see in the * round squat turret, blind as the 
fool's heart,' the stony riddle which vexes all the 
world." (Poet-/oreyVo\. IV., pp. 425-428, August- 
September, 1892.) 



404 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

At a meeting of the Syracuse Browning Society 
Mrs. J. L. Bagg professed the poem thoroughly 
unsatisfactory, unless it meant an allegory as specific as 
this: '*The 'hoary cripple' is Hope, who deludes 
with false promises. , . . The ' ominous tract'. . . 
is the land where reason rules. Processes of the intel- 
lect hide rather than reveal * the Dark Tower ' . . . 
the stronghold of the mysteries of life and death . . . 
the whence, why, and whither of the soul. . . . * This 
quest ' [is] the effort to solve the insoluble. * The 
Band ' [is] all thoughtful courageous souls who in 
the ages have sought for light on these problems and 
failed to find it . . . He turns from the highway of 
Hope into . . . the vast plains of imagination, specu- 
lation, . . . illusion. He has forsaken the safe road 
of reality, knowledge, experience. The * stiff blind 
horse ' may be Pegasus, the winged steed overworked, 
overstrained in these fields of haze and fantasy. . . . 
The * sudden little river ' . . . sweeping away the rem- 
nant of reason. . . . [So] abandonment to the un- 
checked fancy leads to . . . insanity. . . . With 'brake, 
wheel, harrow ' he tortures himself to fix more firmly 
his belief in the superstitions, fancies, insanities, of his 
disordered vision. ... * A great black bird,' the mes- 
senger of the destroying angel. . . . The plain . . . 
changed to mountains. So in great crises . . . there 
comes sudden disappearance of the unrealities . . . 
the true . . . appears, . . . mountains to be scaled 
. . . every-day duties done. . . . Shall I join * the 
Band ' whose wail is * Lost ! lost ! ' Am I defeated 
because I cannot speak the * Open Sesame ' that shall 
disclose the Dark Tower's secrets .? No ! A sluggard 
I have been. To my lips I set my dilatory horn, sum- 
moning every power of my being to waken from 



CHILDE ROLAND 405 

dreaming, to redeem the far-spent day by beifig and 
doing . . . Lesson of the Poem. — The secrets of 
the universe are not to be discovered by exercise of the 
reason, nor . . . reached by flights of fancy, nor duties 
loyally done . . . recompensed by revealment. A 
life of becoming, beingy and doing is not loss, nor failure, 
though the Dark Tower forever tantahze and . . . 
withhold." (Syracuse Browning Club, pp. 11-14.) 

To Mrs. R. G. Gratz Allen, also, in *' The Journey 
of Childe Roland," the poem tells the story of a 
pilgrim who, disregarding his ** first keen intuitions, 
obeys the suggestion of the hoary deceiver at the stile, 
and turns aside into the malarial meadow of sophistry 
and pathless chaos, wandering hither and thither, find- 
ing himself at last surrounded by the ugly heights of 
Doubting Castle, one more victim of Giant Despair 
... he is fully aware of the object of the cripple. 
. . . Herein consists Roland's sin : he chooses to be 
led astray. . . . The soul has lost its way and cannot 
retrace its steps. ... * Virtue once dethroned will 
never return to take her place.' . . . The soul of 
Roland, however much it has stumbled and wandered, 
is redeemed through [the final] shrill trumpet-blast of 
warning ... to those on the plains below. . . . 
This is not challenge ; that were indeed mere brag- 
gadocio. It is simply the tersest statement of an awful 
fate given in the haste of death. It is not the heroism 
of * constant allegiance to an ideal,' but rather the 
majesty of despair; the divine throe of benevolence." 
{Poet-lore, Vol. II., pp. 578-585, November, 1890.) 

In the discussion at the London Browning Society, 
after Mr. Kirkman's paper on '* Childe Roland," Dr. 
Furnivall said he had asked Browning if it was an 
allegory, and in answer had on three separate occasions 



4o6 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

received an emphatic ** No; " that it was simply a 
dramatic creation called forth by a line of Shakespeare's. 
Mr. Sargent had " come to the conclusion that it had 
nothing to do with death. The idea in the poet's 
mind was suggested by the ballad, . . . simply the 
story of a man setting out on an adventure . . who 
finding after great labour the result was not what he 
expected or hoped for, yet goes on bravely . . . 
finding the work of life neither grand nor romantic, yet 
goes on unfalteringly." Miss Drewry looked upon 
the poem as an allegory of life. The Dark Tower 
meant Truth. Mrs. Orr, in commenting on this dis- 
cussion, sympathized especially with Miss Drewry, and 
held that while Browning would deprecate the assertion 
that he meant in any poem something not given in his 
words, he '* would consider himself understood by any 
mind which found in it the reflection of some crisis in 
its own life. ... I have always seen in the poem 
. . . the picture of a dream-like struggle in which 
courage is stimulated by fear and difficulties are out of 
proportion to their visible cause, and the goal only 
eludes us to show that it was close at hand, and attain- 
ment may alike prove victory or defeat. . . . This 
certainly is the mood of the poem, whatever its idea 
might be ; and there is nothing incompatible with such 
a mood in supposing that the idea of a striving after 
truth underlay it: for truth, as Browning describes it, is 
always relative and shifting and may look like a tower, 
but behaves like a will-o'-the-wisp." 

The following anti-allegorical view of the poem, 
given by Mr. Arlo Bates, in the ** Critic," May 8, 
1886, was called out by a paraphrase of the poem by 
Mr. J. Esten Cooke, accompanied by a perplexed 
appeal for some explanation of his query, ** Is the Dark 



CHILDE ROLAND 



407 



Tower the tower of unfaith, and is the poet describ- 
ing the drift of his age ? " ** The difficulty ... of 
most people who stumble over Browning seems to be 
a forgetting of the prime principle that the essential 
quality of the highest poetry is that it says something 
that can be said in no other way. . . , Poetry of the 
highest order . . . has a message of which it is at 
once the substance and the vehicle. Therefore, how- 
ever interesting an allegorical interpretation like that 
offered by Mr. Cooke may be, it must from the nature 
of the case be unsatisfactory. . . . Yet it is sometimes 
possible to give a clew that helps another into the 
poet's mood ; so without meaning to analyze, to ex- 
pound, and least of all to explain a poem from which 
I would fain keep my hands as reverently as from the 
Ark, I ask the poet's pardon for saying that to me 
* Childe Roland ' is the most supreme expression of 
noble allegiance to an ideal — the most absolute 
faithfulness to a principle regardless of all else. . . . 
Ineffable weariness begins the poem. . . . Then 
negative objective desolation. . . . Then subjective 
misery. Then ... a suggestion of conflict that 
brings an overwhelming impression that all the powers 
of evil actively pervade the place ; — then the Round 
Tower ! What does it matter what the tower signi- 
fies — whether it be this, that, or the other .? If the 
poem means anything, it means, I arri sure, everything 
in this line. The essential thing is that, after a life- 
time pledged to this — whatever the ideal be • — the 
opportunity has come after a cumulative series of dis- 
appointments, and more than all amid an overwhelming 
sense that failure must be certain where so many have 
failed ; where nature and unseen foes and the ghosts of 
all his baffled comrades stand watching for his destruc- 



4o8 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

tion, where defeat is certain and its ignominy already- 
cried aloud by the winds of heaven. And the sub- 
lime climax comes in the constancy of the hero. . . . 
The nominal issue of the conflict is no matter, because 
the real issue is here ; with the universe against him, 
with the realization of all this, dauntless he gives his 
challenge ! . . o One cannot read it without a ting- 
ling in every fibre of his being, and a stinging doubt 
whether in such case he might not have been found 
wanting. I cannot conceive of anything more com- 
plete, more noble, more inspiring." 

Can all the allegorical interpretations here illustrated 
be questioned on the score of contradicting the poem 
itself or being self-contradictory in some way ^ 

Why should the poet, if he meant to show spiritual 
failure or physical death, represent his hero as telling 
his own story } Would a dead or a morally lost man 
survive to tell his story in the first person ? In com- 
parison with ** Prospice," which is evidently a **look 
forward" toward death, does the framing of this poem 
admit of the future tense, as that does, and the anticipa- 
tion of the eternal life to be won from the ** Arch 
Fear" .? Are there such differences between the two 
poems — -with reference, for example, to the dull 
persistence despite imminent failure in ** Childe 
Roland" in contrast with the vigorous fight with an 
anticipated fear in *' Prospice," to the solitude of the 
one and the glow of love over the other — as to make 
it evident that the sorer trials of the soul enduring 
life are painted in the one, the summoning of the 
senses to bridge the momentary anguish of death, in 
the other ? 

Is the influence of Bunyan's allegory accountable 
for the theory of ** Childe Roland " which makes his 



CHILDE ROLAND 409 

quest a culpable lapse into unfaith in orthodox reli- 
gion ? Why should the poet call a fall from grace 
a *' quest" ? 

Is it best in one's reading of this poem to be 
content with the mood which certainly can be derived 
from it, without narrowing its symboHsm to any 
exclusive train of allegorical ideas, and without foisting 
ideas upon the poet which at best must be doubtfully 
his ? Does the limitation necessary to pin its large 
symbolism to any particular allegory limit its beauty 
and emotional force, and its allusional applicability to 
universal exper.ence ? 



Single Poem Studies: "Mr. Sludge, 
*The Medium '" 

Page 
Vol. Text Note 
** Mr. Sludge, < The Medium ' " . . . . v 224 315 

I. Topic for Papery Classwork, or Private Study. — 
The Intellectual and Moral Attributes of Mr. Sludge. 

Queries for hivestigation and Discussion. — When. 
Mr. Sludge first appears upon the scene, he is in an 
abject state of penitence seemingly, asking forgiveness 
of his patron for this his first fault in cheating. How 
does his patron evidently receive his first excuse, that 
his mistake was due to the last glass of Catawba ? 

Sludge produces a good effect with the undeveloped 
spirit that owes him a grudge, but counteracts the 
impression by bringing in his patron's sainted mother 
again. He finally gains control of the situation by 
promising to gratify the curiosity of his patron, and 
reveal the tricks of the trade in return for money and 
silence. 

Does Mr. Sludge hit a truth when he declares the 
people who encourage mediums are just as much to 
blame as the mediums themselves, and that they are 
like birds hanging with half a claw to a perch made of 
their conceit in their own opinions, being quite un- 
conscious of the shakiness of their own perch, but 
very much alive to the shakiness of their neighbors* 
perches ? 



MR. SLUDGE, "THE MEDIUM" 411 

In the illustrations Mr. Sludge elaborates to prove 
this point, does he not show a clever appreciation of 
the ways of humanity ? 

Does he make a pretty fair case out for David by 
his showing how the encouragement of the company 
drags the boy farther and farther along the road of 
romancing, but that the final dive into falsehood com- 
plete comes only when one of the company professes 
scepticism, and David, to save all the others from 
being dubbed fools, must be upheld at any cost ? 

Would a doubting Thomas be likely to settle the 
question in the way Mr. Sludge says, by concluding 
that David's tales are not any harder to swallow than 
those of Captain Sparks would be ? 

To the objection that David should pay the penalty 
for the half-lie in the first place, Mr. Sludge makes 
the most natural rejoinder ; would you in the same 
place have done any differently ? Does he succeed 
in showing how hard it would be to confess that first 
half-lie when all the influences were directed toward 
his not doing it ? 

Is it true to human nature that people when they 
are infatuated with an idea will excuse and over- 
look and palliate any facts that might upset their 
aith ? — as Sludge represents his patrons as doing when 
they excuse his mistakes on the score of his being only 
a medium by means of which undeveloped spirits 
sometimes play tricks, or else of his being merely 
human, so that what the spirits say may not be per- 
fectly expressed by him. The infatuation must be 
very great that would accept the Shakers' Hymn in 
G for a thirty-third sonata of Beethoven (Beethoven 
wrote thirty-two piano sonatas). Does Sludge here 
probably exaggerate the credulity of his followers ? 



41 2 



BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 



He answers that objection himself by saying that 
the guests at a private sea?ice are not going to cast 
discredit upon their host's medium any more than 
upon his wine, but his patron interposes that they do 
doubt sometimes. Sludge's nimble wit is ready for 
this contingency, however. In that case his patrons 
will declare that the doubts produced a bad atmos- 
phere for the medium. And should this argument 
fail, there is a last resource ; do you think the last 
resource proposed by Sludge would be efficacious ? 

Here (line 381) Sludge gives a touching picture 
of himself longing for truth, feeling hatred of the 
people who are ruining his soul ; does he seem to 
have any notion that regeneration should come through 
himself? 

But having gone so far, the step from lying to 
cheating is easily made, especially when his patrons 
keep urging him to give further illustrations of his 
power. Does this excuse him ? 

Having shown how the desire of his patrons has 
led him on from point to point in his attempts to 
meet their requirements. Sludge next proceeds to 
divulge some of the methods by which he accomplishes 
his results (line 434). Does the credulity of his 
audience also help him here ? 

Does the description he gives of the way mediums 
get information about everybody serve fully to explain 
all cases of so-called mind reading, as well as supposed 
communications from the other world ? 

Having shown how he manages to know things 
that everybody would say he could not know, he 
then proceeds to show how, once let people accept 
unquestioningly the imposture, it is possible to make 
them swallow almost anything. 



MR. SLUDGE, 'THE MEDIUM" 413 

He is quite right, is he not, when he objects to 
feeling any sort of gratitude to the people who have 
led him into all this ? 

In his strictures upon the women who come to 
consult him, does he mean to insinuate that he took 
some liberties with them on the score that heavenly 
manners would be more free than those allowed on 
earth ? And that he did this partly in revenge for 
the way they treated him, — coddling him, that is, 
only on the ground that he was a medium ? 

What do you think of his next argument, that he 
bolstered up religion, and that the best way to 
meet the lies of the doubters is to exaggerate lies on 
the other side ? 

Miss Stokes, in getting a ** Hve coal" from the 
spirit world through Sludge, has proved the existence 
of the soul ; is not this a gain, even if it come by 
means of cheating ? So thinks Sludge. 

He will even go farther ; he finds a certain pleasure in 
these lies for their own sake. Is this consistent with 
his desire for truth previously expressed (line 694)? 

He, however, reiterates that one does not go into 
the mid-bog of lying without some qualms or with- 
out encouragement, and when the lie is discovered, 
such an outcry is made that one would suppose he 
had been guilty of treating Miss Stokes with indignity. 
He asks only that justice may be done him, and the 
part his followers have had in his fall considered. 

In line 732 fol. he hits at the scientific investiga- 
tors of spiritual phenomena, then at the novelists who 
make use of spiritualism to embellish their stories, then 
at the social light who uses it to make himself con- 
spicuous and important. From Sludge's point of view, 
are his strictures of these different classes justified ? 



414 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

From line 792 on, he proceeds to build himself up 
instead of tearing down his patrons. He admits all 
his cheating, and then proceeds to show how even 
behind his cheating there is a mysterious something 
which he cannot comprehend, and which makes him 
feel that he does not do things of himself. Are the 
steps in this argument well taken ? In its application 
to himself, however, does he not make the mistake of 
supposing there is a constant external interference of 
a mysterious force in the affairs of every-day life, 
instead of life itself being a manifestation of an under- 
lying, constant, mysterious force ? 

Is he not perfectly consistent, when he insists that 
the warnings he gets from stars and apple-pips are just 
as likely to be real as his patrons' more internal warn- 
ings not to go on a journey, etc. ? 

In his argument that nowadays small things have 
become great, he is using a true scientific illustration, is 
he not ? And he truly presents the deductions that 
preachers make from it, but how does he again misapply 
it to his own case in representing himself as a child ? 

Does he make a good point when he says that 
everybody has some unexplained occurrences in his 
life, and lets them remain unexplained while he 
seizes upon such occurrences and builds a system out 
of them .? How much of this latter part of the talk is 
meant to bolster himself up against the objection that 
he is too humble an instrument to have such an 
acquaintance with the ways of the Infinite ? 

He enlarges once more (line 1280) upon the fact 
that he is not so sure his cheating is cheating ; does he 
here follow out an argument entirely opposed to the 
one in which he said all the lying and cheating grew 
out of the first half-lie ? Now truth grows out of 



MR. SLUDGE, "THE MEDIUM" 415 

the first lie. Is there any high philosophical sense in 
which Sludge's dictum, — 

*' I tell you, sir, in one sense, I believe 
Nothing at all, — that everybody can, 
Will, and does cheat : but in another sense 
1 'm ready to believe my very self — 
That every cheat 's inspired, and every lie 
Quick with a germ of truth," 

Even if there be any philosophical sense in which it 
might be said to be true, it is not a doctrine suitable 
to ethics or the conduct of life, is it ? 

His last defence is that he makes life more agree- 
able and more of a success to people than they can 
make it for themselves, and why should he be blamed, 
any more than a poet, who tells about things that 
never happened ? He simply acts the same sort of 
thing that they write. What is the moral difference 
between a poet and a Sludge ? 

What effect does the defence have on his patron, 
and how does Sludge reveal the thorough degradation 
of his character in his final attitude toward his patron ? 

It may be said that Sludge's intellectual qualities 
include a penetrating observation of humanity's foibles, 
and a wide acquaintanceship with religious and philo- 
sophical thoughts of the century, — in fact, he might 
be called a picker up of learning's crumbs in many 
directions, — and, though not always getting his learn- 
ing straight, he had a wonderful, inborn facilit) for 
illustrating all his points with graphic examples and 
apt images. Has he not also a knack for twisting any 
philosophical or religious opinions he knows of into 
sophistical arguments in defence of his own practices ? 

Does this result in his saying many things that are 
in themselves true, but which in his application of 
them become false : 



4l6 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

His moral qualities, on the other hand, are resolva- 
ble into absolute egotism. His aim in life is to ben- 
efit himself materially, and in order to do this he 
makes use of the weaknesses he sees about him, and 
though he despises his patrons, does not scorn their 
help. In those eloquent bursts of oratory where he 
describes himself as longing for the truth and even 
goes so far as to represent himself as sacrificing the 
integrity of his own soul for the benefit of society, 
is he expressing genuine emotion, or only, after his 
habit, playing upon the credulity of his patron, Mr. 
Horsefall '? 

The main proposition in his whole contention is 
that, suppose him to be a cheat and found out in his 
cheating, he does not deserve the ill-treatment he gets 
from society, because so many classes are tarred with 
the same stick, — not only those who are doubting 
and yet really anxious to be convinced of supernatural 
communications, but the cold-blooded investigator 
who scouts everything, but enjoys the investigations ; 
the novelist or poet who scouts, but caters to the 
public taste for mystery ; the diner-out who disbeheves, 
but makes it an interesting fad in conversation. 
While there is certainly truth in what he says and 
he really teaches a good moral lesson to these various 
classes in society to the effect that it would be better 
for them not to deceive themselves, and better for 
them to have larger charity for men Hke Sludge, does 
he show his moral obliquity by never applying the 
lesson to himself, and by considering himself justified in 
cheating because others cheat ? To excuse your own 
sins on the ground that other people sin, is the lowest 
possible form of defence, is it nor ? 

In the second part of his defence it might be intel- 



MR. SLUDGE, "THE MEDIUM" 417 

lectual obliquity instead of moral obliquity which 
makes Sludge fail to see the distinctions between a 
wide application and an egotistical application of the 
truths of the mysteries of the universe. Did he really 
believe that he received warnings from stars and apple- 
pips, or was he again giving his patron something 
which he thought would tell in his favor r 

Aside from the particular type of character under 
scrutiny in this poem, can it be said to be a fair 
presentation of spiritism as it is now understood ; or 
does it reflect the poet's own absolute disbelief in any 
spiritualistic phenomena whatever ? 

Is it not a clever stroke of genius on Browning's 
part to make a medium damn the w^hole spiritualistic 
movement, in the course of his defence of his ow'n 
practices ? 

This experience of Browning's own was recorded 
in the London *' Spectator " thirty years ago (Jan. 
30, 1869), by a Mr. James Know^les : ** Mr. 
Robert Browning, of whose keen study of the 
subject his poem of * Mr. Sludge the Medium ' would 
be alone sufficient proof, tells me that when he was 
in Florence, some years since, an Italian nobleman 
(a Count Ginnasi of Ravenna), visiting at Florence, 
was brought to his house, without previous introduc- 
tion, by an intimate friend. The Count professed to 
have great mesmeric or clairvoyant faculties, and de- 
clared, in reply to Mr. Browning's avowed scepticism, 
that he would undertake to convince him somehow^ 
or other of his powers. He then asked Mr. Browning 
whether he had anything about him then and there 
which he could hand to him, and which was in any 
way a relic or memento. This, Mr. Browning 
thought, was because he habitually wore no sort of 
27 



41 8 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

trinket or ornament, not even a watch-guard, and 
might, therefore, turn out to be a safe challenge. 
But it so happened that by a curious accident he was 
then wearing under his coat-sleeves some gold wrist- 
studs to his shirt, which he had quite recently taken 
into use, in the absence (by mistake of a sempstress) 
of his ordinary wrist-buttons. He had never before 
worn them in Florence or elsewhere, and had found 
them in some old drawer where they had lain forgot- 
ten for years. One of these gold studs he took out 
and handed to the Count, who held it in his hand 
awhile, looking earnestly in Mr. Browning's face, 
and then said as if much impressed, * C e qualche 
cos a che mi grida nelP orrecchio, " Uccismie, uccisi- 
ofie!'*^'' ('There is something here which cries 
out in my ear, <* Murder, murder ! " ') 

*'And truly [says Mr. Browning] those very studs 
were taken from the dead body of a great-uncle of 
mine, who was violently killed on his estate in St. 
Kitt's, nearly eighty years ago. These, with a gold 
watch and other personal objects of value, were pro- 
duced in a court of justice as proof that robbery had 
not been the purpose of the slaughter, which was 
effected by his own slaves. They were then trans- 
mitted to my grandfather, who had his initials engraved 
on them, and wore them all his life. They were 
taken out of the night-gown in which he died, and 
given to me, not my father. I may add, that I tried 
to get Count Ginnasi to use his clairvoyance on this 
termination of ownership also ; and that he ?iearly 
hit upon something like the fact, mentioning a bed in 
a room ; but he failed in attempting to describe the 
room — situation of the bed with respect to windows 
and door. The occurrence of my great-uncle's mur- 



MR. SLUDGE, "THE MEDIUM" 419 

der was known only to myself, of all men in Florence, 
as certainly was also my possession of the studs." 

Mrs. Orr says that Browning affirmed, in a letter of 
July 21, 1883, that the account is correct in every 
particular, but he added these significant words : ** My 
own explanation of the matter has been that the shrewd 
Italian felt his way by the involuntary help of my 
own eyes and face." 

Writing on the subject of ** * Mr. Sludge ' and 
Modern Spiritualism," in Poet-lore (Vol. III., pp. 
84—86, February, 1891), Dr. Morris Jastrow says: 
" That Sludge is for the poet the type of the spirit 
medium, and not merely a worthless individual who 
happens to be in the spiritualists' camp, is clearly 
indicated by the title ' Mr. Sludge *« The Medium." ' 
To my mind it is equally beyond dispute that the 
interpretation of modern spiritualism which results 
from the portrayal of Sludge is the one which Brown- 
ing himself accepts, or at least accepted at the time 
of writing the poem. For him, modern spiritualism 
is merely another term for fraud and deception. 

"It consists of two parties — the foolish who are 
deceived, and the scoundrels who practise deceit. In 
accounting for its existence, he takes into consideration 
but one factor, — the desire of weak natures for mys- 
tery. The supply of mediums is regulated simply by 
the demand for them. 

*' This view I hold to be both superficial and un- 
satisfactory. No great movement, whether in the 
social, political, or religious field, can be explained by 
a small motive, and dishonesty and fraud are small 
motives. . . . The fraud and deception are attendant 
circumstances ; they are not the causes of the move- 
ment, and as little as they can account for the rise of 



42.0 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

spiritualism, can they answer the question as to its 
vogue. . . . There are two reasons, it seems to me, 
for the rise and spread of modern spiritualism, — the 
one of a general character, the other of a special. 
The general one, which applies to other ages as 
well as our own, is the proneness of the human mind 
for mysticism. . . . The other reason of a special 
character as applying more particularly to our own 
age, is the strong reasoning spirit prevailing among 
us." 

Does not Sludge's argument go to prove Mr. 
Jastrow's first general reason ? Does he imply that 
it is the desire to be deceived that gives rise to spirit- 
ualism ? Or that it is the proneness for mystery in 
the human mind which makes it easy to deceive 
people, and helps on the growth of fraud ? In fact. 
Browning and Dr. Jastrow are really of one mind as 
to the nature of the initiative cause, are they not ? 
(For other excellent studies of Sludge, see ** Mr. 
Sludge « The Medium,' " by F. B. Hornbrooke, in 
** Boston Browning Society Papers," and on *' Mr. 
Sludge * The Medium/ " by Edwin Johnson, in 
** London Browning Society Papers," Part VII.) 

II. Topic for Paper y Classzuork, or Private Study. 
— Style of the Poem. 

Queries for hivestigation a>id Discussion. — The 
poem is, of course, a monologue, so that whatever 
glimpses we get of Mr. Horsefall and the other 
patrons come through Sludge, usually in quotation 
marks. Do you get a vivid impression as to the 
personalities he thus introduces ? 

An interesting feature of his style is his direct way 
of introducing supposable scenes and conversations, in 
illustration of the points he is making in his argument, 



MR. SLUDGE, "THE MEDIUM" 42I 

for example, the imaginary David and his encourageis. 
Captain Sparks with his war tales, the hard-headed 
lavi^yer Humgruffin. The scene in which he figures 
(line 450 fol.) is quite complicated. Mr. Horsefall 
is supposed to take Sludge's place and try some 
spiritualistic feats upon Humgruffin, and fails, which 
proves, of course, that Sludge has supernatural powers, 
for if they detect the spurious character of the writing 
in one case, they could detect it in the case of Sludge, 
as a lady present in this imaginary scene is represented 
as observing, and to whom Sludge replies outside, not 
inside, the scene. Do these illustrations, into which 
Sludge falls and falls out with no warning, make the 
style confusing, until the reader becomes perfectly 
familiar with Sludge's methods of speech ? 

Another interesting point about his language is its 
colloquialness. It is full of slang and hints of allu- 
sions, — for example, ** very like a whale," which he 
probably did not know was in " Hamlet," — and ref- 
erences sometimes correct and sometimes incorrect. 
It has been objected that Browning made a slip in 
making him say *' V notes," for the Americans call 
them **V's." Otherwise, has the poet made his 
American allusions correctly ? 

Do all these points in style give atmosphere and 
dramatic truthfulness to the portraiture of Sludge ? 

Objections have been made to this poem, on the 
score that it contained no musical lines and that it 
was too dialectical to be poetical ; would you answ^er 
to this, that though the style is not in itself musical, 
it is in perfect harmony with the subject of the poem, 
and if it were any more musical we should not see 
Sludge as we do ? And that the dialectics are not in- 
troduced as an end, but as a means for showing up 



422 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Sludge through his manner of turning argument to 
account ? 

Mr. Edwin Johnson says : ** Looking at the piece 
as a whole, the language and the structure seem to be 
quite what they ought to be, and we don't want any- 
thing altered." 



Single Poem Studies: "The Ring 
AND THE Book" 

<'The Ring and the Book" . . . Vols, vi., vii., Text and Notes 

I. Topic for Paper, Classzvork, or Private Study. 
— The Plot of Incident. (Book I.) 

The Introductory Essay in Camberwell Brownifig 
(Vol. VI., pp. vii-xxxvi) and the digests prefixed 
to each division of the poem give suggestions on 
this and the following Topics and Queries. Compare, 
also, the ** Raw Material of * The Ring and the 
Book' " (Appendix, Vol. VII., pp. 331-341). 

(Queries for hwestigatio?i and Discussion, — Is the 
plot of incident or the plot of character of greater 
interest to modern readers ? 

Is it a mistake on Browning's part to relieve the 
interest in the plot of incident at once by telling the 
story in Book I. ? Or is it a sign of his skill, the poem 
being designed in this respect so as to enrich the plot 
interest by making it more complex, and to throw the 
interest more upon the relation of the characters to the 
story ? 

Why does Browning, in drawing his analogy be- 
tween the way in which the pure gold was hammered, 
filed, embossed, and made a ring by use of an alloy, 
and the way in which the pure crude fact preserved in 
his old yellow book will be wrought into a story by 
the use of fancy, compare the bare fact with the goJd, 



424 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

and the fancy with the alloy ? Is this a strange pro- 
ceeding for a poet? Should he not have let fancy 
stand for the more precious material instead of mere 
alloy ? 

Is his idea that the office of fancy is to make pos- 
sible the revitalization of the facts, and that, this done, 
the fancy is like the alloy, an alien element, separable 
from that which it has shaped and set in order, the 
reality itself, just as it all took place, now left intact 
and whole ? (See Introductory Essay, p. x.) 

Is this a sound conception of the relation of the 
poet's imagination to facts and life ? Is the convinc- 
ing presentment of Hfe the proper aim of the poet and 
the artist ? 

Is this the reason why a work of art in which the 
art is prominent, so that it is more noticeable than that 
which it portrays, is not artistic ? And is this why a 
historic work in which facts predominate over the life 
that made them is not so true as a work of art dealing 
even with inaccurate historic material ? 

Does such a view of the office of imagination de- 
grade genius, or give it endless room to ennoble life ? 

Will one proof of Browning's success in rekindling 
the life locked up between the covers of his yellow 
book be that the later divisions of this poem will in- 
crease our interest over that felt in this first book, in 
which he himself tells us just how he fancies all took 
place, so that the story will seem even more alive 
apart from his relation to it ? 

Is this why an argument or mere recital of what 
happened is duller than a story of hozv it happened, 
zvho made it happen, etc. ? 

What light does this throw on the comparative 
merits of a plot of incident and a plot of character ? 



THE RING AND THE BOOK 425 

What does Browning mean by lines 1323-1356? 
That his design will be to incite in his readers some- 
thing of the pleasure of the historic sense, by putting 
them in sympathy with real life of a long time ago, 
and to do this in no unreal or merely romantic manner, 
but to indicate the continuity of the modern life with 
that past life, accomplishing this real feat in the cloud- 
land of the imagination ? This, he adds, he might do 
by a selective process. Does he choose rather not 
one aspect, but many different points of view with 
design from the first, as these lines show ? (See In- 
troductory Essay, p. viii.) 

What does he gain by this method ? Higher art, 
more truth, fuller life ? 

II. Topic for Paper, Classworh, or Discussion. — 
The Typical Group of Characters : Half-Rome, or 
The Married Man's Opinion. (Book II.) 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — Is the 
speaker who represents Half-Rome typical or indi- 
vidual ? 

What sort of pubhc opinion does he represent in 
speaking of Violante and Pietro, Guido and Pompiha, 
and the escape with Caponsacchi ? 

How does he show bias, and what evidence of it 
can you point out ? 

Does his desire to be gazette of the news to the 
man he is gossiping with, and to influence his opinion, 
lead you to guess anything of his story ? 

Do his portraits of old Luca Cini and the young 
curate Carlo reveal humor and knowledge of human 
nature ? 

Does he show shrewdness in his way of telling 
how the murder came to pass ^ Is his narration to be 
depended upon for some qualities, if not altogether for 



26 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 



the facts ? Is his cynical picture, for example, of the 
cold comfort Gaido's friends proffer him lifelike ? 

What is his moral outlook upon life ? Is his talk 
so skilfully contrived by the poet as to give you a clew 
to what his judgment in such a case as this is worth ? 
What is his view of domestic lynch law ? 

In considering that the civil process of justice is a 
blundering and inadequate way to cure such wrongs 
as he supposes to be Guido's, is he altogether ill- 
advised ? Is his alternative proposition to make every 
husband his own judge and executioner one that 
throws light on the difficulty or on his own character 
and personal grievances ? 

In his character and point of view is he historically 
true to a full half of public opinion in the seventeenth 
century? 

Is his distinction between the wrongs done a man 
personally and those done him as to his property and 
the capacity of the law to redress them, well taken ? 
How would it apply to-day in comparison with then ? 

III. Topic for Paper, Ciasszuork, or Discussion. — 
The Typical Group of Characters : The Other Half- 
Rome, or the Bachelor's Opinion. (Book III.) 

Queries for hivestigation and Discussion. — What 
are the main differences between the views of the 
characters in this murder case held by Half-Rome and 
by the Other Half- Rome ? 

Is the speaker who represents the Other Half-Rome 
a younger man than the one whose view has just been 
heard ? Or is he less of a conservative and more the 
liberal of his day and generation ? 

Is his sentimental view of Pompilia due to his bach- 
elorhood or to his general social outlook ? 

Is he more charitable than Half-Rome toward 



THE RING AND THE BOOK 4.27 

Molinisin as well as toward Violante ? Is his theory 
applied to the Cardinal that ** Trust's politic, suspi- 
cion does the harm" (line 484), one that explains 
his own easy-going disposition, and points the contrast 
between the portion of public opinion he represents 
and that represented by Half- Rome ? 

Is he justified in thinking that Violante' s confession 
did not right her falsity, and that some less superficial 
way of setting wrong right needed to be devised ? 

In what opinions of the way this murder came 
about and of its principals do these two speakers agree ? 

Do they regard the nobility and the Roman priest- 
hood in the same way ? 

How does the second speaker's view of the justice 
of legal processes agree with that of the first speaker ? 

What different construction does this second speaker 
put upon the letters, both the first one to the Abate and 
the others that purported to pass between Caponsacchi 
and Pompilia ? Which construction is the more 
convincing ? 

Is the evidence cited by the second speaker given 
more circumstantially, as if he had followed the case 
more closely, depending less upon hearsay and his own 
conjecture, than the other ? Is his monologue more 
dramatic, giving the story each one has to tell ? Is the 
first monologue more descriptive ? 

What contrasts do the two present in the way in 
which they speak of Pompilia' s motherhood, and 
in the inferences they draw from Guido's calling 
** Caponsacchi ' ' outside the door ? 

What is the moral outlook of this speaker with 
reference to Guido's right to discipline his wife ; to 
the Governor's and the Archbishop's friendly pre- 
sumptions in favor of the husband ; and, finally. 



428 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

to the conclusion that Guido was the real enemy of 
society ? 

Has the poet contrived to throw into these mono- 
logues a lifelike air of eager excitement over the moot- 
points and of delight in having so extraordinary a case 
to talk about ? 

IV. Topic for Paper, Classworky or Discussio?i. — 
The Typical Group : Tertium Quid, or the Aristocratic 
Observer. (Book IV.) 

Queries for Inz>estigatio?i and Discussion. — Is the 
conclusion justifiable that the dispassionateness of 
Tertium Quid is no more trustworthy than the parti- 
sanship of the others ? 

Is the conclusion that dispassionateness guides to 
no truer knowledge than partisanship opposed to the 
authority science arrogates ? 

Is this conclusion confirmatory of the principle of 
democracy that each man may contribute to any result 
a needed and valuable element ? 

Is it the points in which these three speakers agree 
that are trustv^^orthy } Or those in which they differ } 

Has that which is especially characteristic of each 
value in the story, whether it shows insight or whether 
it shows prejudice ? And in this sense, of revealing 
relative value, is the poet jus'tified in permitting us to 
get so little actually out of them, because we get so 
much in seeing how large truth is, and of what variously 
modifiable elements public opinion is composed ? 

What light does this monologue throw on the 
speaker's character and attainments ? 

Is Tertium Quid's point of view really essentially 
different from Half- Rome's in the opinion taken of 
Pietro, Violante, and Pompilia, and in his high regard 
for Guide's possession of rank ? 



THE RING AND THE BOOK 429 

What does distinguish his monologue especially, 
then ? Its disdain of the commonalty as a whole ? Its 
utter inconsequence r The insincerity which prevents 
him from comJng to any conclusion, since he is not 
really interested in the case at all, as the other speakers 
are, except to make use of it for the sake of exhibiting 
his own cleverness to persons of quality ? 

Does he agree with the other two speakers in his 
light opinion of the law? 

Are the closing lines cf this monologue proof of 
Browning's ironic way of regarding his pretensions to 
superiority? (See Introductory Essay, p. xix. ) 

** The dullest account of all," writes Dr. F. B. 
Hornbrooke, "is that by Tertium Quid, who tries to 
give a colorless statement of affairs. But we learn 
from his study -why he is uninteresting. It is because 
he does not take any side, and has no sympathy with 
anybody. ... If passionate advocacy sees only one 
aspect of the truth, passionless indifference misses what 
is most vital. Feeling is blind to some things, but 
apathy is blind to everything." (''Some of the 
Teachings of * The Ring and the Book,' " Poet-lore^ 
Vol. I., pp. 314-320, July, 1889.) 

V. Topic for Paper y Classwork, or Private Study. 
— The Central Group of Characters : The Count. 
(Book V.) 

Queries for Ifwestigatio?i and Discussion. — Does 
the Count show by the manner of his plea what his 
view of life was ? 

Are his politeness and smooth humility in opening 
his speech overdone ? Does his gentleness give an 
impression of genuineness or pohcy ? How does his 
suave beginning match with his brutal way of regarding 
his marriage ? 



430 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Is his defence of himself an implicit attack upon 
Society, since he holds that if he is to blame he is to 
blame for a course based on Society's pet institutions, 

— nobility, the Church, marriage ? 

Does judgment of the Count depend upon the 
question whether his view of marriage was a good one 
or not ? Or does it depend upon his character and 
its defects, — his egotism, avarice, cunning, cruelty ? 
Is there any connection between his view of marriage 
and his bad qualities ? 

Are his attempts to justify himself, as to the letter 
to the Abate he wrote in Pompilia's name, his threaten- 
ings of her when he ought, by his account, to have 
been cruel, his fear to avenge his wrongs till law had 
spoken, his arousing from dull despair at the news of 
his son's birth to right this crowning injustice, — are 
all these clever, but unconvincing on account of the 
man's personality, — perceived despite them ? Or are 
they to be considered as sincere and in keeping with 
the degree of development that the man had reached ? 

Is the weakest part of his defence that which makes 
him claim that he was alternately moved to hesitation 
and rapt away by impulse to slay the three ; or that 
which makes him pose as the reformer of manners, the 
restorer of the antique virtues of marriage, whose 
vindicatio.n is his due from society for his services to 
it ? Are these two or three lines of defence consistent 
with one another ? 

VI. Topic for Paper, Classwork, or Private Study, 

— The Central Group of Characters : Caponsacchi. 
(Book VI.) 

Queries for Investigatioii and Discussion. — Does 
Caponsacchi's utter lack of any solicitude to ingrati- 
ate himself with the Judges, whom he upbraids for 



THE RING AND THE BOOK 43 1 

their shallow judgment, contrast strongly, at the outset, 
with Guido's truckling manner, and give the keynote 
to his frank and direct personality ? Does his evidence 
convince the more for this ? 

Is his story, as he says, the story of the good 
Pompilia did to him ? What are the main stages in 
this spiritual development ? 

Does Caponsacchi's own story bear out the opinion 
of those critics who say that he immediately obeyed 
the impulse to help Pompilia ? Which would be the 
more admirable, hesitation or immediate decision ? 
Does the answer depend upon the purity of his aims ? 
(See Camberwell Brozv?iing, Vol. VI., Introductory 
Essay, pp. xxi and xxii.) 

Is the insight of each of these two, Pompilia and 
Caponsacchi, with regard to each other, proof of their 
love, or is their high order of intuitional intelligence 
the basis of their recognition of each other's purity ? 

Why did not Caponsacchi like two special things 
Pompilia said (lines 1212-1214, 1249-1254).? 
Why did he hke this other (lines i 290-1 298) ? 

Is Caponsacchi's foreboding of ill at Castelnuovo 
natural } 

Is the impulse to kill the evil man, which Browning 
makes Caponsacchi regret he did not satisfy, and which 
rouses Pompilia to her attack, morally justifiable ? 

Is Caponsacchi's explanation of Guido's relation to 
Pompilia (Hnes 1759-1771) a proof of insight, as 
much as his explanation of her relation to himself } 
Does it make Pompilia the central motive force of the 
poem ? 

What is his ''instinct" worth upon the right 
punishment for Guido, — not death, but leaving him 
to himself, out of God's ken or man's care .? 



432 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Is the ideal of life to which Pompilia led him one 
that would take him outside the Church ? 

VII. Topic for Paper, Glassworks or Private Study. 
— The Central Group of Characters : Pompilia. (Book 
VII.) 

Queries for hwestigation and Discussion. — Is the 
character morally the strongest in the poem the one 
with the wisest head ? 

Does her monologue give the clearest and least 
biassed account of all the events and characters of the 
story ? 

What is her view of Violante's deception ? Is it 
morally and intellectually profound ? Does her anal- 
ogy of the plants being left to grow where God 
plants them prove too much, and make human inter- 
ference of any sort with life unjustifiable ? Or is 
there a right caution underlying the figure, if it be 
taken less literally, against such interference as in any 
way violates the individual quality of the nature one 
may assume to dispose of for its good ? How does 
this apply to Violante's arrangement for her marriage ? 

Was Violante's wrong, then, not the adoption of 
Pompilia, but the deceit about it, through that deceit's 
so warping her own nature that she was led to con- 
ceive the second idea of setting her first step right, and 
so on ? This marriage is really what Pompilia tests 
her by, is it not ? And is she right ? 

If Pompilia had been less genuine and reasonable, 
and had not taken Guido as if he were genuine and 
reasonable, would she have aroused his animosity to 
such a fatal degree ? But in that case would his evil 
soul have had a greater effect on hers, and saved her 
some material and physical harm at the expense of her 
own integrity ? 



THE RING AND THE BOOK 433 

Is crookedness fought best with a good that is 
through expediency made half crooked itself, or with 
the straightest policy of which one is capable ? 

Is Pompilia justified in her revolt against her hus- 
band, because their souls were estranged ? 

Does her story, because it shows her personahty in 
its incorruptibility and instinctive capacity for real 
wisdom, explain why Guido hated her and plotted to 
conquer her by ruining her, and also why Capon- 
sacchi loved her and was uplifted by her ? 

Does she really misunderstand Caponsacchi's atti- 
tude of hesitancy and moral struggle, at first, in the 
project to rescue her, or is her intuition clear here, 
also ? (See Camberwell BrozvnmgyNo\. VI., Introduc- 
tory Essay, p. xxvi.) 

Why was Pompilia' s motherhood necessary to what 
conquest she had over Guido ? Is it fitting that his 
deepest wrong to her should leave her soul unscathed, 
and be the means of saving her to punish him ? Why 
does it do this ? Why does it lend will to her dull 
desire ? 

Would she be less or more admirable if for her 
own sake, instead of for her child's sake, she had 
resented cruelty and injustice and fled ? 

Is it consistent with her character that her 
brave onslaught upon Guido at the Inn should be 
justified by her as for Caponsacchi's sake, instead of 
for either her own or the child's sake ? 

" The question may arise," writes Mrs. Alice Kent 
Robertson, ** given the facts of Pompilia' s birth, her 
ignorance, her extreme youth, is her development 
into the * perfect soul' — Caponsacchi's language — 
consistent t 

*' I believe age, as commonly reckoned, to be a 
28 



434 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

very small factor in the development of character ; 
that inheritance and experience are all. Though it 
would seem that Pompilia, by her woful lot, were 
expiating the sins of her parents, from them or from 
some far-away ancestor she must have inherited a 
somewhat that, from the first, marks her the child of 
purity ; however it may be, the miracle is here. 

** Leaving the question of inheritance, we know 
that the benefit acquired from book knowledge is 
comparative, that it is by experiejue alone we learn. 
... In its light the discipline of life takes on alto- 
gether new meaning and becomes replete with hope. 
... So it is with our Pompilia. Does she seem to 
speak with the tongue of angels, by her wisdom far 
exceeding the limit of her age and condition, she 
hiows because she has suffered. Moreover, who shall 
estimate the extent of the vision that comes to dying 
eyes ? . . . But suffering is not the sole factor in her 
development : joy is born with the advent of her 
child, and through maternity is the woman perfected. 
. . . With this new joy is woven another, — the 
while a voice within Pompilia sings ' to Rome, to 
Rome,' her necessity puts finger forth and summons 
Caponsacchi." (^Poet-lore, Vol. L, pp. 263-269, 
June, 1889.) 

VIII. Topic for Paper, Classwork, or Private Study. 
— The Institutional Group of Characters : The Legal 
Experts : Advocate De Archangelis (Book VIII.) 
and Doctor Bottinius (Book IX.). 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — Do the 
pleas of the two lawyers throw any light on the case ? 

Do they reveal very distinctly their different per- 
sonalities ? Can a picture of the general appearance 
and manner of these two men be derived from the 



THE RING AND THE BOOK 435 

way in which the poet has made them present their 
case ? Which is the more sohd and which the more 
brilliant lawyer ? What clew to their different fame 
and nature is given by the plenteous Latin of the one 
and the varied and light literary allusions of the 
other ? How much are the pleas of these two law- 
yers due to their own characters? How much to their 
professional habits and methods ? Does either one of 
them clear the character of his client ? 

Is Law as an institution to attain social equity and 
justice satirized in these two books? (See Introductory 
before cited, p. xxvii.) 

Are the closing lines of each lawyer's talk, when 
he has finished his plea and makes comment upon his 
labor (Book VIII., lines 1 790-1 793, and Book IX., 
lines 1561-1568), consummate touches of real life, 
vitalizing the aims of the two men in their profession ? 

Is the speech of each uninteresting in itself, but 
interesting in the portrayal of human nature ? 

IX. Topic for Paper, Classworky or Private Study. 
— The Institutional Group of Characters : The Pope. 
(BookX.) 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — Does 
the Pope's verdict embody Browning's judgment of 
the characters, or are his opinions peculiarly his own, 
and his character, therefore, a dramatic portrait ? (See 
Introductory Essav, before cited ; also programme, 
**The Prelate.")' 

Is his view of Caponsacchi such a view as Brown- 
ing would have held ? 

Does it follow, because his judgments of the Arch- 
bishop, the Convertites, of Guido and his brothers 
are severe, that therefore he is ** the genuine Robert 
Browning who has sat on the papal throne," as Prof. 



436 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

C. C. Shackford says? (** The Pope," Poet-lore, 
Vol. I., pp. 309-314.) As a matter of fact, did not 
the poet represent this Pope's judgment of the case 
according to the record t He reconstructs processes, 
but are they not implied in the sentence rendered ? 

But does the poet, in making this Pope have an in- 
tuitive vision of the doubt that will revolutionize dog- 
matic religion yet leave religious or spiritual Hfe 
essentially the stronger, transcend the bounds of 
possibility in the character of a genuinely devout and 
thoughtful Pope of the end of his century ? 

Has Browning grasped, with relation to this char- 
acter of the Pope, the prominent characteristics of the 
time as to the religious ferment which Molinism 
excited, and which was so in the air that allusion to it 
in every book of this poem is perfectly in place ? 

Does a superior and exalted yet veritable human 
personality emerge before the reader of this book ? 

X. Topic for Papery Classwork, or Private Study. — 
The Effect of his Sentence on Guido. (Book XI.) 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — What 
right has Guido to his claim that he is the victim of 
the Society that sentences him ? 

Is his dependence upon Society for his moral backing 
such as to imply that he has never had any principles 
of his own? Is virtue necessarily an individual and 
not a social possession ? And is virtue, if based merely 
upon general social usage instead of being the fruit 
of personal moral experience, aspiration, and will, 
undeserving of the name ? 

** Let Browning remove that false plea of Pompilia's 
for her wicked husband," says a reviewer : '* * So he 
was made, he nowise made himself " Is this a false 
plea } 



THE RING AND THE BOOK 437 

If Guido's virtues so-called, — that is, his allegiance 
to established Church and State — are not in any active 
sense his own, how about his vices ? Are these less 
passively his own ? As soon as he openly and unequivo- 
cally expresses them, being forced to it by his desper- 
ate case, are they not felt to be the least dishonorable 
part of him ? 

Is this what Pompilia meant when she said, in God's 
" face is light, but in His shadow healing, too ; let 
Guido touch the shadow and be healed " ? 

Is passing through guilt by sincerity one way to 
come to a realization of what stanch morahty is ? 
And is the passage from an ambiguous to an open 
malevolence the one way for Guido to begin his 
spiritual development ? 

His arraignment of society's hollowness, in so far 
as it is keen and just, and not merely a cloak for him- 
self, awakens some intellectual respect, does it not ? 
And when at last he leaves pretence as of no further 
use to him, do his essential and sincere paganism 
and atheism, now revealed, excite awe rather than 
contempt ? 

But does Guido's second monologue add any new 
traits of character to his first, or merely bring them 
out from their fawning lurking-places? 

Does it reveal more conceivably his hatred ot 
Pompilia ? 

Is Guido's claim to be fiercely vicious, strong, and 
manly in his hate, real or a sham ? Does he first 
now when the death psalm-singers arrive become him- 
self aware enough to acknowledge the real weakness 
of his soul ? 

Why does the ethical climax of Guido's career 
hinge upon his genuine good opinion of Pompilia ? 



438 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

XI. Topic for Paper, Classzuork, or Private Study. 
— Final Results of the Sentence, Public and Personal. 
(Book XIL) 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — Is the 
twelfth book superfluous ? Or does the Venetian 
traveller's account of Guido and the Pope give a facet 
of town opinion on Guido and the Pope which prop- 
erly supplements the poem ? 

Why should the lawyers be brought in again ? Is 
their transposition of parts, as to Guido and Pom- 
pilia, too ironical, or in keeping with their first 
appearance ? 

Does the interest stop with Guido' s outcry at the 
end of Book XI., or would the reader not be content 
without hearing of Pompilia's death and her child? 

Do the conclusions of the Augustinian friar repre- 
sent the final outcome as the poet regards it ? 

XII. Topic for Paper, Classworky or Private 
Study. — The Historical Background. 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — What 
literary characteristics of the seventeenth century are 
illustrated in the poem? 

Is the impression given by the poem of a transitional 
phase in the religious attitude of the world historically 
true ? 

Was Molinism really a dangerous heresy, or a 
theory of the dignity of human nature, which had an 
element of truth that was valuable ? As professed 
by Fenelon and Madame Guyon, was Molinism the 
religious impetus of the day ? See " Molinos the 
Quietist," by John Bigelow, and Shorthouse's 
*' Golden Thoughts from the Spiritual Guide of Miguel 
Molinos ; " also, McClintock and Strong's Biblical 
Encyclopaedia, Vol. VI., article ** Molinism," Plati- 



THE RING AND THE BOOK 439 

na's '* Lives of the Popes," Fenelon's writings on 
Molinism and **The Life of Madame Guy on." 

Is the presentation of law and custom as it is given 
through Guido, Half-Rome, the Venetian traveller, 
and the lawyers, historically accurate ? 

Xin. Topic for Paper, Classzvorky or Private 
Study. — Artistic Design and Style. 

Queries for I?ivestigatio?i and Discussio?i. — Would 
the poem be more perfect artistically or less so if the 
institutional group of characters was omitted ? 

** We can understand why the two lawyers are 
introduced," says Professor Walker, «* but we should 
acquiesce in their introduction only if we found them 
equal to the other characters." Is it fair, however, 
to expect that a poet should so far disregard nature as 
to make all his characters equal ? 

** The speeches of the opposing lawyers carry 
realism to an intolerable prosaic extreme," writes Mr. 
E. C. Stedman ('* Victorian Poets," pp. 334, 
335). Is this one of the faults of '*The Ring and 
the Book;" or have the lawyers an integral part in 
the design, and a place, also, in the light and shade 
of the whole as a social picture of the great case of the 
day, and as a humorous relief from the intense coloring 
of the central group of characters. (See Introductory 
Essay, before cited.) Have they, moreover, their 
convincing place as characters true to life and the 
humors of life ? 

** The eiFect [of the design] is stereoscopic, — 
you see the facts from ever new points of view, 
little by little the real truth is evolved from the chaos 
of testimony ; little by little the real motives of the 
actors become manifest. As the process goes on, you 
catch yourself speculating about each of the dramatis 



440 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

person^y as if he were a character in real Hfe, The 
complexity of human motive, the wonderful inter- 
action of character and circumstance, the vastness of 
the soul — all these begin to dawn upon you," writes 
Dr. A. H. Strong (Lecture on ** Poetry and Robert 
Browning," ** Philosophy and Religion," p. 530). 

**Guido's fate might have been left uncertain until 
the end with no loss that we can discover, and with 
very considerable advantage," says a reviewer in 
St. Paulas. What is to be said for and against this? 
With the plot of incident the dominant interest, would 
the plot of character thrive as well ? 

Is Browning's introduction of himself in the first 
book as the artist re-creating the story an artistic 
mistake ? Is it a departure from his socially conceived 
structure of the poem, or a fulfilment of it ? 

Is the style of each monologue diff^erent, and adapted 
to suit the character of the speaker? How is this 
shown ? 

Pompilia's speech surely should be devoid of literary 
allusions and classical quotations, and be marked by the 
utmost simplicity and sweetness. Is it ? The Pope's 
ruminations, to be characteristic of Innocent XII., should 
be those of a grave but not frigid nature ; they should 
be redolent of Church history and philosophical lore, 
and warm with a protecting sympathy for the com- 
mon people. Caponsacchi's indignant and grief- 
smitten speech should not be bare of signs of courtly 
and literate allusions. Do the allusions and diction of 
these and the other books arise from the nature of the 
characters and suit them dramatically ? Why, for 
example, does Guido talk of his omoplat ? Is this a 
pedantry of Browning's or a pedantry of Guido's, 
who was skilled, he tells us, in anatomy ? Could 



THE RING AND THE BOOK 44I 

such a character as De Archangelis help regaling the 
rudges with amusing quirks of Latinitv ; or Bottini 
Jesist quoting Virgil and telling anecdotes of the 
saints ? 

Is it a sign of the ** unevenness of the work," as 
has been said, that the speeches of Pompilia, Capon- 
sacchi, and the Pope are so distinguished above the 
rest for poetic beauty ; or is there dramatic reason why 
these should be so distinguished ? And, also, that the 
others should not be ? 

Whenever the style rises towards an exalted or 
purely lyric strain, as in the passage at the end of the 
first book addressed to Mrs. Browning as ** Lyric 
Love," is this in keeping? Have the rougher pas- 
sages a different but equally valid justification ? 

Is "The Ring and the Book" a work of which 
"a great part might be lost without detriment to the 
world," as has been said by Professor Walker, or is 
it a prodigious example of the truth of Mr. Birrell's 
statement in ** Obiter Dicta" that ** it is plain truth 
to say, no other English poet, living or dead, Shake- 
speare excepted, has so heaped up -human interest for 
his readers ? ' ' 

Is the inner meaning of ** The Ring and the Book " 
separable from its artistic structure or conveyed by it ? 

What is its inner meaning ? That, although truth 
is a relative thing only, and not to be attained through 
human testimony nor through mere intellectual pro- 
cesses, it is yet real in its relation to life, and in the 
appeal it makes to the intuitional intelligence of each 
individual soul ? 

Is the idea of the supremacy of the individual over 
his own career an implicit lesson of the poem ? How 
does Pompilia' s story illustrate this? *' Let Brown- 



442 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

ing get rid of that unpleasant conversation with the 
Archbishop," says a reviewer. Would the poem be 
stronger philosophically, if this clash between the 
Church and the individual conscience were left out ? 

Is Browning partial to the artist in claiming for 
fancy so large a share in the revelation of truth ? In 
what special sense does he use the terms **fact" and 
*' truth " ? 

Is the verse of ** The Ring and the Book " related 
organically to its design ? 

If so, the emotion belonging to each character por- 
trayed will suit it and the circumstances under which 
it is acting, and the expression will aiFect the verse so 
that it will attain a high degree of intrinsic beauty in 
some of the books where this sort of beauty suits the 
aim, and in others will attain only a relative beauty, 
however high in degree, as measured by its lower 
level of success in the diflFerent aim here desired ; and 
thence it will follow that persons judging by standards 
of beauty in verse which regard form as separable 
from content and to be manipulated and liked in it- 
self, will approve of certain of the books, " Pompiha," 
** Caponsacchi,'* **The Pope" (inconsistently in- 
cluding both of Guido's speeches also, perhaps, and 
other bits here and there), and condemn the others. 
Is this why Mr. Sharp, for example, representing 
many others, says that ''The Ring and the Book" 
enshrines poetry which no other than our greatest could 
have written," and " has depths to which many of 
far inferior power have not descended"? Is he 
wrong, therefore, in concluding that it is, *' regarded as 
an artistic whole, the most magnificent failure in our 
literature," since he is judging it as an artistic whole 
without reference to its artistic design ? 



THE RING AND THE BOOK 443 

Is it fair to condemn a man for failing in doing 
what he did not mean to do, and to try him by the 
requirements of a design the judge might have had in his 
place if he had been doing the man's work, but which 
the man himself did not have, while he did have an- 
other distinctly revealed and illustrated ? 

Is the judgment of many of the critics unconvincing 
because irrelevant, the question being not what is 
superior verse, but whether, in each case, the verse is 
effectively made one with the emotion and character 
portrayed ? 

Does ** The Ring and the Book " as an artistic whole 
bring out the character interest of each of its parts with 
appropriate verse-expression, so that form and content 
are organically related, and all the parts made contribu- 
tory again to the whole as a symmetrical organism ? 

Mr. Arthur Beatty perceives " a great and organic 
difference .... in the general character and atmos- 
phere of the several books" which is due **in no 
slight degree " to its dramatic character. For ex- 
ample, in Half-Rome, wherein the speaker is the 
married man jealous of his wife, who sides with 
Guido, the verse is characterized by ** no ornament 
which is incompatible with a poetic interpretation of 
the low views of life represented by him. . . . The 
verse of the Other Half- Rome in which a chivalrous 
bachelor speaks, is far different. . . . His eyes are 
raised to : — 

* Little Pompilia, with the patient brow 
And lamentable smile on those poor lips, 
And under the white hospital array, 
A flower-like body,' 

and he sees all in relation to her. These the opening 
hues give its whole atmosphere; and it is distinguished 



444 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

by its frequent beautiful imagery, especially of flowers. 
The verse is singularly sweet." 

Examining with reference to the strophe, or group 
of lines constituting a single flow of thought or emo- 
tion, the monologues of the main characters, Mr. 
Beatty finds that those ** in the first monologue of 
Guido average seventeen lines, in the last, ten lines. 
Caponsacchi's average nine and a half lines, Pompilia's 
nine, and the Pope's fifteen and a half. These fig- 
ures show that the Pope, in keeping with his character, 
employs strophes which are longer than the average 
length of any other character. . . . He goes over the 
case, weighs, ponders, and ' lets flow his thoughts forth.' 
The substratum of Pompilia's and Caponsacchi's words, 
on the other hand, is * not thought,' but a subhme emo- 
tion. Their verse is therefore more intense, with its 
shorter and burning periods. Though Pompilia's 
strophes average almost as long as Caponsacchi's, 
his often run to a greater length than any of hers. 
* He speaks rapidly, angrily ' speech that smites . . . 
*blow after blow.' . . . Pompilia's speech is the 'low 
sighing of a soul after the loud ones ' ... in beau- 
tifully equitable verse. . . . The change in form of 
the strophes of the first and last speeches of Guido is 
very significant. In the first he speaks as ' Count 
Guido,' surrounded with the conventionalities of a 
proud and exclusive society, . . . now with mock 
mildness, now with passion, always with the most 
crafty argument . . . But in the second ... as a 
condemned man ... all the sham drops away." 

Again examining these monologues as to metres, 
Mr. Beatty records that the use made of them in the 
different books ** shows a fine sense of characterization. 
Pompilia and the Pope use the largest percentage of 



THE RING AND THE BOOK 445 

the iambic line, — seventy and sixty -three per cent re- 
spectively. In their calm and, in a sense, dispassion- 
ate view of the case, they are calm and measured in 
their verse. Their use of the trochaic-logaoedic verse 
[made up of trochaic and dactylic metre] is about the 
same — twenty seven per cent. Of the agitated iambic- 
logacedic [iambic and anapaestic] they make a very 
slight use — only three and ten per cent respectively. 
In the rapid angry speech of Caponsacchi the percent- 
age of iambic lines falls to fifty-six and the tro- 
chaic-logaoedic to twenty-three, . . .the agitated 
iambic-logacedic rises to twenty-one per cent. Guido 
in his first defence has a percentage of fifty-two of 
iambic lines, twenty-four each of trochaic-logaoedic 
and iambic-logaoedic. In his second speech sixty-one 
per cent of the lines are iambic, fifty-three trochaic- 
logaoedic, and only six per cent iambic-logaoedic. 
This last change is significant in the highest degree. 
... In his earnest plea for life there is no place for 
aught but earnest words." 

Again, as to the caesural pause, another important 
element of blank verse, Mr. Beatty's scrutiny shows 
that the Pope's lines are marked by regularity of the 
caesura, producing a closer verse and a corresponding 
lack of variety in the cadences. The feminine cssura, 
the pause coming after an unaccented syllable, giving 
a more broken flow to the verse and indicating emo- 
tion or mental disturbance, and the masculine, the 
pause coming after an accented syllable and expressive 
of equanimity and calm reason, are used equitably by 
the Pope, fifty per cent of each. ** Pompilia shows a 
preference for the masculine caesura, using sixty- three 
per cent to forty-seven per cent of the feminine. . . . 
Guido in his first speech uses sixty-six per cent of 



446 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

feminine, and in the last speech fift\^-two per cent, a 
change significant" of the altered mood. Capon- 
sacchi's verse is smoother, using forty-five per cent of 
feminine to fifty-five per cent of mascuHne caesuras. 
As to the place of the c^sura, it is remarkable that for 
the masculine c^sura after the second accent, ** mak- 
ing the most equable rhythm possible in English verse, 
. . . Pompilia shows a decided preference." In 
these placings of the caesura Caponsacchi shows a 
**wide variety of rhythms;" the Pope the greatest 
variety, the movement of his verse being ** freer and 
bolder than any of the others." Guido's two speeches 
reflect a difference corresponding with that evidenced 
in other respects. 

The fusion affected in blank verse by run-on lines 
affords another evidence of characteristic differences, 
upon which Mr. Beatty reports that ** Pompilia' s 
Verse remains more within the limits of the line than 
the others. . . . Her thought moves in smaller 
circles, and is at the extreme from the Pope. . . . 
Guido and Caponsacchi take a middle place, ... al- 
though Guido has rather the most." 

The test of appropriate effectiveness in reading 
aloud should give in a more synthetic way corrobora- 
tion of such detailed analysis as this. Does it ^ Tn all 
such observations as to the dramatic character of verse, 
personal impression decides, of course ; but it may be 
claimed that it dq,es not decide arbitrarilv, and that the 
conclusion is based upon evidence which is derived 
from the facts. 

In his ** Primer of English Verse" (p. 224), 
Professor Corson afiirms that " All things considered, 
the greatest achievement of the century in blank 
verse is Robert Browning's * The Ring and the 



THE RING AND THE BOOK 447 

Book.' I don't mean the greatest in bulk (although 
it is that, having 21,134 verses, double the number 
of the * Paradise Lost ' ) ; I mean the greatest achieve- 
ment in the effective use of blank verse in the treat- 
ment of a great subject — really the greatest subject, 
when viewed aright, which has been treated in English 
Poetry — vastly greater in its bearings upon the 
highest education of man than that of the * Paradise 
Lost.' Its blank verse, while having a most complex 
variety of character, is the most dramatic blank verse 
since the Elizabethan era. Having read the entire 
poem aloud to classes every year for several years, I 
feel prepared to speak of the transcendent merits 
of the verse. One reads it without a sense almost of 
there being anything artificial in the construction of 
the language ; and by artificial I mean put consciously 
into shape. Of course it zvds put consciously into 
shape; but one gets the impression that the poet 
thought and felt spontaneously in blank verse. And 
it is always verse — though the reader has but a mini- 
mum of metre consciousness. And the method of 
the thought is always poetic. This is saying much, 
but not too much. All moods of the mind are in the 
poem, expressed in Protean verse." 



Single Poem Studies : " Red Cotton 
Night-cap Country " 

Page 
Vol. Text Note 
** Red Cotton Night-cap Country " .... x i 283 

Topic for Paper y Classzvorky or Private Study. — 
The Story and its Relation to the Style. 

Queries for hivestigation and Discussion. — The story 
alone is quite simple, as may be seen by the abstract 
given in the Notes referred to above ; but, as Browning 
treats it, it becomes complex, not only on account of 
the character portrayal he has woven into it, but also 
because of the way in which he has chosen to tell the 
story. The poet, instead of relating it in simple narra- 
tive form, beginning at the beginning and marshalling 
events as they occurred, casts the poem in the f)rm 
of a conversation with his friend Miss Thackeray. 
Having done this, would it be at all natural for him 
to plunge right into the story the moment he met 
his friend } On the other hand, would it be natural 
for him to talk for a thousand lines and more before 
he begins his story t However this might be, are 
any ends served by this long preliminary talk (Parti.) 
vi^ith his friend t 

Although it seems like a discursive sort of talk 
leading nowhere in particular, does not the poet con- 
standy give infprmation as to the country which 



RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 449 

formed the general surroundings, the church which had 
a special connection with the story, and the house which 
was the actual abode of the actors in the drama ? Does 
the lengthy discussion on night-caps and fiddles carry 
the thought onward toward the story, or serve only as 
a humorous embellishment of the conversation ? 

Is the first indication of the tint, as it were, of 
the story given when the poet asks the question 
(line 332), *' Why not Red Cotton Night-cap 
Country?" Is not this a distinct step in the direc- 
tion of the story ? 

Having at last pointed out the spot where he de- 
clares he will prove that a night-cap of visionary red 
gleams, and having mentioned the owner's name, he 
proceeds to tease his companion by not telling her his 
reasons for considering this the veritable red spot ; is 
this teasing talk merely a humorous adornment to the 
conversation, or is it full of hints as to the real facts 
of the hero's life, combined with misleading infer- 
ences ? Are there some hints such as that in lines 
737—739, ** He had an open hand ... Or stop — 
I use the wrong expression here, — An open purse,'* 
which cannot be understood until the story has been 
told ? 

When even the description of the heroine reveals 
nothing worse than that she wore a wig. Miss Thack- 
eray is represented as making a most conventional sum- 
mary of the facts she has gathered, and declares he has 
failed to prove that any glimmer of red can be found 
in this white-cotton night-cap neighborhood. Does 
this long speech, though not carrying the story on at 
all directly, yet indirectly do so, by furnishing a cli- 
max of wrong inferences which forces the poet to 
divulge his bit of tragedy at last ? 
29 



450 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Before telling the story, however (Part II.)* ^he 
poet has a preliminary word to say : what is the gist 
of the elaborate image the poet here unfolds ? 

Do you agree with his conclusions that that part of 
opinion surviving from the past which stands firm 
should be left standing as long as it is any use for 
the guidance of individuals or society, and that that 
part which has become mere rubbish should be cleared 
away, and a fresh building up of opinion begin ? 

This image is introduced to show that Miranda 
was one who could not tell which was still firm and 
which was rotten, so he tried climbing by means 
of both the rubbish and the towers ; does the figure 
of **turf and towers" stand as a symbol for the in- 
fluences affecting Miranda's life, as ** Red Cotton 
Night-cap Country " stands for the action which 
resulted from these influences ? 

In describing the unquestioning, rehgious side of 
Miranda's mind, what further information does the 
poet give about Miranda's church ? Why does he 
mention Voltaire and Rabelais as symbolic of influ- 
ences which might affect Miranda's faith ? Does the 
poet refer to any actual incident or facts of Talley- 
rand's life in his reference to Prince Vertgalant (line 
226) ? What is the appropriateness of the allusion 
to Sganarelle ? 

In lines 266 fol. does the poet represent the spirit 
of Sganarelle as working within Miranda, and is that 
spirit one which tempts him to the ways of Vert- 
galant rather than to the ways of Eldobert ? 

Do these rather obscure passages give a foretaste of 
the manner of man Miranda is? In lines 331-354 
the poet introduces the image of a tent on the turf; 
does this give another foretaste as to Miranda's life ? 



RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 451 

From line 355, does the style become less discur- 
sive, so that the facts of the story succeed each other 
more rapidly ? Is there something in the tone of the 
style which makes you suspect that Clara de Mille- 
fleurs is not telling the truth in her first story ? 
Although the poet says, ** Monsieur Leonce Miranda 
heard too true a tale," he adds, ** perhaps I may 
subjoin too trite." 

What do you gather as to the poet's attitude toward 
Clara in the digression from the story he makes at 
line 679 fol. ? 

Although the story now moves forward, all the 
time, is the style constantly embellished by figurative 
ways of presenting the facts and remarks upon the 
moral aspects of the situation ? Does the poet seem 
to insinuate in some of his remarks that living in such 
a ** tent " erected on **turf" was in itself not so bad 
as Miranda's failing to recognize the permanent ele- 
ments of good in it, so that he had to quiet his con- 
science by regarding it as something he would make 
up for, later on in his life ? 

In lines 136-189 (Part III.) there is a fine ex- 
ample of the fitting of nature imagery to the mood at 
the time ; are there any other examples of this sort in 
the poem ? 

When the poet quotes does he give the impression 
that he is quoting the exact words of the actors, or 
rather that he is imagining what they might say ? 

Does the poet give any direct description of the 
Cousinry ? 

What impression does he give of them, and how 
does he manage it ? 

What image does he invent for Miranda's new 
attempt to justify his way of living ? 



452 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

From the digression (lines 713 fol.) does Browning 
give decided hints as to the sort of advice he thinks 
Miranda should have had from his friend Milsand ? 

Incidentally, this is a beautiful tribute to his friend 
Milsand, is it not ? 

Do you agree with the poet's conclusions (lines 
786—860) that it is useless to try to change the basis 
of any one's faith, but that the ethical apphcations to 
the affairs of daily life may be modified to suit new 
contingencies ? Was this something the advisers he 
sought did not clearly see ? 

Does the poet show disapproval of the way the 
Church treated the matter ? Does he give any hint of 
the way he thinks it should have acted ? Would such 
action as he hints at have been consistent with the 
way it had acted on other occasions where the 
circumstances were different ? Or would it have 
agreed with the sort of advice Milsand might have 
given Miranda ? Is Browning, therefore, sarcastic 
when he says the Church should not have hesitated to 
say, '* Each from the other go, you guilty ones" ? 
(line 931). 

In Part IV. the poet explains that it is the poet's 
province to give a man's thoughts, the newspaper's 
part to give his words ; does he exercise the preroga- 
tive of putting Miranda's thoughts into language which 
would probably not occur to Miranda ? Does it none 
the less reflect truly Miranda's soul ? 

Does the language he puts in Clara's mouth when 
she answers the cousins also turn into poetry her 
thoughts rather than what she may actually have been 
supposed to say ? 

In interpreting the souls of these two, does he show 
his sympathy for them and understanding of them 



RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 453 

better than he does when he gives the final criticism 
of their respective characters ? 

Does his doubt of Clara's capacity to love truly, 
show that even the poet has some prejudices ? 

Might she not have been so constituted that she 
could not see what would be the right action any 
better than Miranda, whose power of true loving the 
poet never doubts ? 

Do you agree with the suggestion in the Introduc- 
tion (see Camberwell Broiv?iing, Vol. IX.), that 
Browning is himself in this poem on the side of love ? 
Or do you think he believes Clara and Miranda ought 
to have separated ? 

Is not Clara right when she says that their love for 
each other saved them both, and made their lives far 
better than they would otherwise have been ? 

Is it not greater justice to realize that those who have 
sinned may be regenerated, and that society should give 
them the chance to live a whole and complete life, 
rather than doom them either to the continuance of 
sin or to the mutilation of their best instincts ? 

Is lack of will power to make a decision the special 
sin most objected to by Browning in Miranda ? 
(Compare ** The Statue and the Bust," also Introduc- 
tion, Camberwell Brozv?ii?igy Vol. IX.) 

What were the political and religious movements 
of Miranda's day in France as reflected in this poem .'' 

(See Camberwell Browningy Notes, Vol. IX., p. 
283, for allusions. For further information see Taine's 
''Modern Regime," Vol. II., Chap. 4; Forbes's 
**Life of Napoleon III. ; " Legge's " Pius IX. : the 
Story of his Life.") 

In referring to the description of the **meek, 
hitherto, un- Murray ed bathing place," Professor Walker' 



454 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

says : " The manner in which the poet there introduces 
himself and his tastes and habits is full of meaning. 
In a simple picture of nature there would be no place 
for him ; but there is place when the object is to 
give prominence to the eiFect of nature upon man, not 
visually alone, but in his life. . . . His principal 
object is not to paint nature, but rather to illustrate the 
pleasures human life derives from nature. For this 
purpose multiplicity of points of contact, rather 
than orderhness or artistic arrangement, is important." 
In this particular case is the poet's object not so much 
to show the relation of nature to his own enjoyment 
of it as it is to present the scene setting for the story ? 
Mr. Symons says of Miranda and Clara: **This 
man and woman are analyzed with exquisite skill ; but 
they are not in the strict sense inventions, creations : 
we understand rather than see them. Only towards 
the end, where the facts leave freer play for the poetic 
impulse, do they rise into sharp vividness of dramatic 
Hfe and speech. Nothing in the poem equals in 
intensity the great soliloquy of Miranda before his 
strange and suicidal leap, and the speech of Clara to 
the Cousinry. Here we pass at a bound from 
chronicling to creation ; and however splendid the 
chronicle, this is a great step." Would this poem 
have gained by dramatic treatment all through, or 
would a charm peculiar to itself have been lost in 
this way ? Does the charm consist largely in the way 
we see the poet's own mind working with the facts 
and presenting them always in an atmosphere which 
seems to be compounded of his own sympathies and 
opinions, and those of society, which he subtly 
satirizes ? 



Single Poem Studies: "The Inn 
Album " 

Page 
Vol. Text Note 
" The Inn Album " x 132 296 

I. Topic for Papery Class-work y or Private Study. 
— The Dialogue and its Management. 

Queries for hivestigation and Discussion. — Is the 
stage setting of this poem typically English ? What 
signs of its English quality are noticeable ; and are 
these marked, not merely by familiarity such as belongs 
to English scene painting by other English poets, but 
by the keener observation and frequently ironical 
touch of the cosmopolitan who knows his own country 
the better for knowing other countries well ? 

Is the realism of the dialogue too prosaic for a poem ? 
Or is the verse so dexterously blent with lifeHke talk 
that the realism gives the line freshness and **go," 
while the metre unobtrusively confers upon the dia- 
logue the restraint and compressed vigor that a novel 
in prose usually lacks ? 

Is *' The Inn Album " a more successful novel in 
verse than the ** Red Cotton Night-cap Country," 
because it joins the quicker action of the drama with 
the story-telling quality of the novel, and so strips 
away discursiveness of all sorts ? 

Are the descriptive parts of the poem graphic and 
terse to such a degree that they are virtually little but 



456 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

stage directions ? Is the movement brisk ? How- 
much time does it occupy ? 

Does the setting of the poem show dexterity in 
managing that all the scenes, except one, shall take 
place in the Inn parlor, and yet so naturally arrang- 
ing the exits and entrances that the characters appear 
tete-a-tete successively, so far as is necessary for car- 
rying on the plot of their cross-relationship ? How 
is this effected ? 

Is the part the Inn Album passively plays all 
through the dialogue artificial, or a natural incident 
made use of ingeniously ? 

How do the various tete-a-tetes open up the little 
plot, and bringing the three main characters into closer 
and closer contact, take the steps leading to the last 
intense situation and tragic end ? (See digests of the 
parts of the poem, in Notes, Camberwell Browning , 
as cited.) 

Is the second appearance of the girl, outside the 
closed door, at the end of the poem, where her light 
gay voice and bantering talk are heard, while she her- 
self remains unseen, a refreshing foil to the grim scene 
inside, and an original conclusion ? Or does it leave 
the story in too unfinished a state as regards the future 
of the younger pair ? 

Is the dialogue especially English, and appropriate 
to the middle of the nineteenth century ? 

The opening speech of the nobleman gamester, at 
the beginning of the poem, alludes to Browning (lines 
14-18) in a depreciating way. Is this in question- 
able taste on the poet's part ? Or is it in place, here, 
among the various references to modern English 
writers, as a natural contemporaneous hit, and one 
fairly representative of common criticism upor. Brown- 



THE INN ALBUM 457 

ing as an artist ? Does it help to mirror the time, 
then, and does the irony of the poet upon his critics in 
bringing forward thus their fun at his expense, outdo 
them? 

Does the reference to Wagner and then to Beetho- 
ven at the end of the poem (Hnes 46—50, and see 
note thereon, p. 303), similarly reflect a characteristic 
of the time in moot criticism of Wagner ? Or does 
it in this case, in giving the girl's opinion, imply 
Browning's also, that Beethoven was ** worth fifty 
such"? How do these compare with other such 
allusions in the poem as to reflecting pubHc opinion of 
the time ? 

Is this poem the more lifelike for being rich in 
*•' local color " of this kind, and will this contribute 
toward its increasing value and interest as a transcript 
of typical English nineteenth-century life in the 
future ? Or is it likelier to lose interest on this 
account ? 

What other aesthetic characteristics contribute to 
give this dialogue its especial flavor ? Is the allusion 
(Part II., lines 42-75) to the cousin's music at 
three guineas an hour, and the ** semi-grand " piano 
she has to use while her master has *' the table top," 
and the use made of this as illustrative imagery an 
appropriate bit of realistic symbolism ? And the elm- 
tree whose beauty so feeds the eye of the elder 
woman in her talk with the girl (Part III., lines 59-69, 
241-251), is this one of many such essentially Eng- 
lish objects made use of to bring out character and 
plot in a way that suits the scene and dialogue ? 

Which of these realistic figures and allusions are 
humorous ? 

Does the speech of the two younger characters in 



458 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

the dialogue show freshness and inexperience in com- 
parison with that of the older man and woman ? 
How is this effected ? 

Is the element of surprise in the plot well man- 
aged ? Is the reader led to divine the relationships 
existing between the characters, and so to follow 
readily the thread that is knitting the plot ; but later 
to be carried to the loosing of the knot without guess- 
ing how it will be managed ? In the talk of the 
two men, for example, is it clear guessing enough, 
except to them, that they have loved the same woman, 
and in the talk of the two women, that the elder one 
cannot be as happy as the younger one supposes she 
is ? But it is a mystery what the older man is going 
to do to make the woman obey him, or how she is 
going to get out of the difficulty, so that on top of 
her apparent acceptance of the youth the final tragedy 
comes with the suddenness of fate. 

Does '* The Inn Album," together with the " Red 
Cotton Night-cap Country," show, as Mr. James 
Fotheringham has put it, **a pathological rather than 
an aesthetic or ethical curiosity and development" .? 
Is it marked by diffuseness, as Mr. Alexander says 
all Browning's work after 1868 is ? 

Is **The Inn Album" so concise, vigorous, and 
unspeculative in the conduct of the dialogue that the 
common classification of it as belonging with the more 
discursive works of this period of Browning's writing 
shows a manifest inaccuracy or a stupid lack of criti- 
cal discernment ? 

Is it, in management of plot and directness of dia- 
logue, **more nearly similar in form to the pure 
drama," as one of Browning's English critics, Mr. 
Arthur Symons, has been enough unprejudiced by the 



THE INN ALBUM 459 

free treatment of a home subject to see, ** than any 
other of all Mr. Browning's poems not cast in the 
dramatic form " r 

*' We have a thread of narrative, but only a thread 
connecting dramatic situations," says Professor Walker 
also; *'and comment there is none. The curtain falls 
before the eifect of the last tragic scene is disclosed : 
it is left to the imagination. . . . And each character 
has spoken for and interpreted itself." 

II. Topic for Paper ^ Classzvorky or Private Study. — 
The Characters. 

Queries for Investigatio7i and Discussiofi. — Does 
the first speaker give an equivocal impression of quiet 
reserve that may be strength of character and that may 
be merely pose ? How early does his bearing begin 
to awake suspicion ? Is he right in taking the young 
fellow's friendly proffer to cancel the gaming debt 
just as he does ? Or is there room here for a little 
suspicion of so much virtue in a gambler's honor .? 

When, after having confided to the youth his real 
character as it comes out in his account of why he is 
not a success in life, is one led to believe him to be 
in earnest in his conviction that in her "life's prize 
was grasped at, gained, and then let go" ? He has just 
said he hated his love (Part II., line 107). Which is 
the pose .? Did he really hate her for ill-starring his 
future ? 

Is the boy contemptible in his readiness to admire 
brilliant sins and aristocratic looseness ; or likable on 
account of his freshness and weakness with a man to 
whom he thinks he owes friendship ? 

How much of the glamour of such arrogant self- 
indulgence as that of the gamester noble is due to his 
rank and artificial social importance ? 



460 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Is the girl in her ardent friendship for the older 
schoolmate refreshing and natural, and without the 
stain of weak admiration of the cynical that is a part 
of the boy's relation with his man friend ? 

She and the boy are both more talkative and free 
of fancy than their two friends. Is this lifehke and 
suitable to the conditions of the case in both of these 
interviews ? 

Is the older woman so much of a sphinx that one 
begins to suspect her too ? Or is it soon evident 
that her nature is self-contained from suffering and not 
from any lack of frankness ? Whenever she does 
find it requisite to tell anything, does she speak with 
the utmost directness, and follow it up with words 
which most unflinchingly impart the main truth ? 

Does she leave any doubt as to her love of her 
younger schoolmate ? And yet, is it a very warm 
friendship, which after an unequivocal expression of 
unhappiness from the one friend is met by the other's 
obeying her bidding and leaving her at once ? Or is 
it such a shock to the girl, especially with her own 
marriage pending, that her going is natural ? Or is it 
that the stronger nature of the woman and the sense 
of her self-controlled suffering awe her, checking 
her gay volubility, and making her feel that the most 
delicate sympathy she can show is silence, and doing 
as she is bidden ? 

Miss E. D. West, in her paper on ** An Aspect of 
Browning's Villains" (in ** Browning Studies" of 
the London Browning Society, pp. 106-129), con- 
siders that there are indications of the unused better 
self in the hateful elder man of "The Inn Album." 
**This man has keen intellectual perceptions of moral 
distinctions ; he nowhere calls evil good. He has 



THE INN ALBUM 461 

subtle discernment of the quality of the earthly bless- 
ings he has forfeited. Just herein does the tragedy of 
his life lie ; in his clear vision of the heaven of noble 
human love between which and himself a great gulf 
has, by his own act, been set. His heart has become 
bound in coils and coils of guileful motives, yet it as- 
serts itself in a direct sincerity for once." This once 
is when he reverts in the talk wkh. the boy to the 
love experience which might have been the means to 
him of gaining success. 

"And later on," continues Miss West, ** the pas- 
sionate appeal to the woman from whose love he had 
shut himself out by his grievous wronging of her, has 
a strange sort of pathos by reason of its being 
prompted by complicated impulses of a twofold 
nature, only one part base. We, the readers, are 
given insight into the half genuineness of his transient 
feeling ; while sbe, his former victim, is seen by us 
as discerning in his entreaty only the latest device of 
his guile. Sbe does not perceive that this appeal 
made thus to her by the w^orld-hardened man is not 
wholly the utterance of a mere lustful desire, . . . but 
is in some measure also the last despairing gasp after 
a heaven of good, made by a soul as it sinks down into 
an earthly hell of vileness. She is, in his eyes, a sym- 
bol of the better life that he might have attained to, 
and has missed. 

** That he is still capable of thus feeling, — that, 
even perverted, the desire of self-surrender to a nature 
which has seemed to him to represent v^hat is * high- 
est and best and most real ' finds even a temporary 
place in his heart, is an evidence of his being not 
wholly dead in sin." 

Does the ** large deliberate look" of the w^oman 



462 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

when the man makes this proposition to her gain 
our trust that it can read this villain more deeply ? 
Is she one of Browning's intuitional characters whose 
decisions are unerring ? 

Does he indeed feel her superiority, as Miss West 
intimates, and the blight his consciousness of his 
wrong course with her has cast upon his life ; but 
does he feel this as Guido felt Pompilia's moral 
power, to resent it and strive to overcome it by guile ? 
Is his course naturally the same, — first, by craft to en- 
snare it ; and is his way of doing this suspicious of 
playing on her womanly vanity as to the influence she 
retains over him yet ? — second, by the less hidden 
attempt by threat to force her to ruin herself? 

Is it likelier that the lady feels his power almost 
overwhelming her once more, and that in the des- 
perate moral necessity her soul feels to protect herself 
from him, she steels her heart more violently than 
considerately against an overture with a good impulse 
in it, which had she recognized with less scorn she 
could have encouraged without yielding to it herself? 

Is the suggestion to this effect made in the Intro- 
duction {^Camherzvell Brozujiingy Vol. X., p. xiii) the 
most probable ? 

Was scorn, however, — although it might move 
him first to do his worst to outwit it, so that he could 
still be the arch-scorner, — the one token of proven 
defeat and stupidity on his part which could sting his 
soul into doubt of the wisdom of the habit of cynical 
superiority and imperious selfishness at the root of his 
malevolence ? 

What signs betray him, and which of these con- 
structions of him in his relations with her do they 
authorize ? 



THE INN ALBUM 463 

Can the woman be justilied for taking the course 
she did, marrying for labor's sake and without frank- 
ness as to her past, even to save herself from worse 
wreckage ? How much allowance must be made for 
her necessity to take to public work of some absorbing 
kind at a time — now fifty or more years back — 
when there was scarcely any career open for a 
woman's energies, almost none in her position as a 
clergyman's daughter in England, except as married ? 

It has been said of*' The Inn Album " that ** every 
character is either mean, or weak, or vile." Do you 
feel, on the contrary, that the girl is charming, pure, 
and not without proof of the capacity for goodness 
and wisdom ; that the boy, although weak and snob- 
bish in his respect for the devilish nobleman, is loyal, 
frank, and intelligent in grain ; that the woman's 
only weakness is the depth and lavish generosity of 
a singularly noble heart, and that her sensibility and 
intellect are of a high order ? 

As to the lago of the piece, is his nature so strong, 
except for his assumption of privilege to make all 
others the inferior ministers of his amusement or 
profit, that he arouses the keenest interest, awakening 
concern for his squandered powers, at the same time 
that his course excites our moral hatred and our 
artistic pleasure ? 

Is the plot most indebted to him or to his victim ? 
Although he initiates the plot, does she direct its 
course despite him ; and does she hold in her 
hand all possibility of redeeming him as well as 
herself, and the abihty to make the younger man and 
woman happy or miserable ? Is it just, but hard, that 
her own deception of her husband should be the 
means of the man's last wrong to her? 



464 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

** The parson's beautiful daughter," writes Miss 
West, in the article before cited, " would, without the 
advent of her seducer, have ' vegetated on, lily-like,' 
through some ordinary lot of life, never attaining to 
the sorrowful grandeur of soul to which the ruin of 
her peace raised her. But, in the [character of the 
worker of evil] as presented to us by Browning, is 
there not significance beyond the actual part [which 
he plays] ? " 

Is the principle of the explanation of the good 
worked by evil through personality, suggested by 
Browning here, the spiritual illumining of a dark 
picture ? 

Upon this point Miss West again writes : — 

" Truly, if Browning maintains his hopeful theory 
about humanity, nobody can say that he shirks put- 
ting it to a very severe test. The adjective * shal- 
low ' which so currently affixes itself now to the noun 
* optimism ' is hardly applicable to the theory as held 
by the thinker who admits thus the obligation to find 
room in it for the fact that humanity comprises ex- 
istences so hateful as these [this English nobleman 
and the Italian nobleman, Guido] . 

**The question cannot be evaded, and he shows no 
desire to evade it : * Is there in human nature, in 
these its concrete forms, potentiality of final deliver- 
ance from the evil in it, given only time enough for 
the work ^ ' To this question his answer is affirma- 
tive ; expressed, indeed, in no definite formula, but 
discoverable in and through his art." 

Is the woman's suicide inevitable artistically.? Why 
does Browning call the threat against her written in the 
Album a warrant .? Does he imply that her poison- 
ing of herself was in a sense not her own deed, and 



THE INN ALBUM 465 

ustifiable in self-defence ? This is a part of the real 
event on which the story was based. (See Notes, 
-Camberzveli Browningy as cited, for particulars.) 

Did the young man understand fully what she had 
done when he throttled her persecutor, and w^as his 
act justifiable ? 

Is her clearing of him from any legal process against 
him by her last writing in the Album strictly true ? 
Was it just and right, and essentially true ? 

Would the law have taken cognizance of such wrong 
and remedied it, if she and the younger man had not 
righted it as they did ? 

If it were put upon the stage, what would be the 
artistic effect of this last scene, wherein the young 
man, alone, silent, all turmoil over, is hearing the in- 
nocent voice of the girl, outside the door, while him- 
self standing between the dead bodies of this man and 
woman whom each of them had called friend ? 



30 



Portrayals of National Life : 
English 

I. Topic for Paper, Classwork, or Private Study. 
— Historic Illustrations of Political Life. 

Page 
Vol. Text Notes 

*< Strafford" (1639-1642) i i 277 

" Cavalier Tunes "( 1642-51, Civil War period) iv i 361 
*' Parleying with Charles Avison," lines 381 

to end ( 1 745 circa^ Preston Pans and 

Culloden) xii 167 355 

'*Clive" (1774, Indian Empire) . . . . xi 168 312 
**The Lost Leader" (middle nineteenth century 

reaction) iv 4 362 

** Why I am a Liberal" (1885) xii 279 383 

"Jubilee Memorial Lines" (1887) .... xii 279 383 

For special studies of ** Strafford " and ** Avison," 
see programme, '* Single Poem Studies " and *• Music 
and Musicians," and for all these poems. Intro- 
ductions and Notes, Camberwell Browning, as cited 
above. 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — Is it 
in the light of an ideal of democratic advance toward 
such a ** federated England," as he speaks of, at the 
close of ** Charles Avison," that Browning has con- 
ceived his historic illustrations of English political life ? 

Does he show in them that political progress has 
been effected through reaction as well as advance. 



ENGLISH NATIONAL LIFE 467 

but without relaxing the inevitableness of the general 
tendency toward the development of every unit of 
humanity, — that is, toward democracy? 

Is Browning patriotic without being either insular or 
imperial ? 

Is ** Strafford " conceived in an impartial spirit, 
so that the honest impulses of the time are exhibited, 
animating both sides of the political struggle, between 
the divine right of kings to govern and the people's 
right to authorize government ? Yet is there any 
equivocalness as to which issue best embodies progress ? 

What does he mean in '^Charles Avison " (line 
390) when he says, *' Suppose back, and not for- 
ward, transformation goes ' ' ? 

Is the general sense of stanzas xv. and xvi. to show 
how politically in English history the transformation 
from the dominance of royal right to that of human 
right was effected through the initial forward move- 
ment represented by Pym, despite the succeeding 
backward movements which modified the practical 
result ? Though night succeeds day, as the poet's 
fancy puts it, ** heading, hacking and hanging" of 
recusants under the Restoration following the success 
of anti-Royahsm, there is no night nor day as to the 
purpose animating the whole movement, for it is, in 
essence, one, and goes forward. And though what 
is practically effected is merely the substitution of 
royalty by consent for royalty by divine right, still, the 
reactionary forces against which England marched at 
Preston Pans and Culloden were quelled in that shape 
of absolute as opposed to constitutional monarchy, 
and pushed from the path of England's progress. 

" Thus a new right, that of the people, arose in 
modern society," says Drury, *'in opposition to the 



468 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

absolute right of kings, and humanity entered upon a 
new stage of its journey. Feudalism had been an 
advance over Carlovingian barbarism. Royalty had 
been likewise an advance over mediaeval feudalism. 
After having constituted the modern nations, developed 
commerce and industry, favored the blossoming of the 
arts and letters, royalty undertook to render its ab- 
solute right eternal and demanded of the Catholic 
Church to aid it in maintaining itself therein. Eng- 
land had the good fortune, thanks to her insular posi- 
tion and to her traditions [and thanks, also, to Pym, 
says Browning, thanks to his personal ideals, initiative, 
and energy], to grasp the principle which was destined 
to be that of the future. To her wisdom she already 
owes two centuries of tranquillity amid the ruins 
crumbling around her." (See Grosvenor's Drury's 
''General History of the World" and Green's 
"History of the English People.") 

Why does the poet make '* Strafford from the 
block," and ** foes " as well as friends (lines 426 and 
427) ** shout * Pym, our citizen ! ' " Does he seem 
to recognize here that the conservative element is as 
necessary as the radical for progress ; or only that the 
initiator of a fresh political impetus is clearer-sighted and 
stronger-willed in accomplishing through struggle with 
his opponents what all honest citizens desire, however 
they differ as to method — the progress of their country, 
and that to him, therefore, the credit is mainly due f 

Is Browning, in his ** Cavalier Tunes," inconsistent 
with his elsewhere implied political philosophy, be- 
cause he enters so sympathetically into the personal 
point of view of the Cavaliers rallying to the support 
of the falling house of the Stuarts, and reflects so 
attractively their bluff and intrepid fidelity ? 



ENGLISH NATIONAL LIFE 469 

What is the purport of Browning's picture of the 
man who '* gave England India " ? Does it illustrate 
that the moral courage it takes to decide to pursue one's 
own life regardless of honor or dishonor, — to be cut 
off from public advantage and undisturbed by that 
fact, is a more fundamental test of a man's worth to 
his country than the physical courage to face risk 
which gave it an empire ? 

Is Clive's point of view, when he felt the cold 
muzzle of the pistol touch his forehead, that not death 
but an obscure life was to be feared, and such blasting 
of his ambition for future distinction that suicide would 
be his only resource ? 

Is the old man, who recalls the anecdote, right 
in making it suggest the personal application to his 
own life that if he had felt less regard for the right 
and more for wealth and honor, he, in his degree, so 
far as his ability permitted, would have acted as Clive 
had in his degree ; and that, however he and all the 
world admire the ruthlessness and cunning of a man 
endowed with such powers as Clive's, still they admire 
him very much as they admire a tiger who murders 
half a village, not for the deed but for the quality the 
brute shows ; and that in the ]ong run not such traits 
of aggression but spiritual traits of character increase ir 
value and significance ? 

Should work of the sort Clive did for a nation be pri- 
vileged, morally, as work for an individual ought not to 
be ? Is there one moral standard for a private citizen 
and another for the public official or the soldier ? 

In giving to this real story of Clive (see Notes, 
Ca?nberwell Brow7iing for information), these cross- 
lights of interpretation as to real courage and 
real virtue, does the poet indicate the half-corrupt 



470 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

and at best temporary value to civilization of the 
policy of aggressive military imperialism instituted 
by Clive ; and that the real tasks of civilization will 
have to be taken up on a different plane ultimately ? 

What comment on the poem and on Clive' s policy 
does Clive' 3 suicide imply? 

As to the act itself, was it courage ; or fear, as Clive 
suspects ? Compare this way of meeting death with 
that of " Prospice." Would just that temper of mind 
in face of death be possible to a man whose life had 
been spent in aggression and violence ? 

What impression does the poem present of the per- 
sonality of the ** great unhappy hero, Clive," and of 
the nameless old soldier who was his comrade and one 
of the underlings at PLissy ? 

Vivid passing pictures of other characteristic figures 
are given, incidentally, in the course of the old man's 
monologue, in its spirited, by turns chatty and rumi- 
nating couplets : the graceless boy who half laughs at his 
old father's delight in telling the pet anecdote of his 
famous friend ; the eleven choice military spirits, " Cap- 
tain This and Major That," who none of them 
demurred a word, in time of need, in favor of **Sir 
Counting House ; " and '' Cocky" himself, who, cheat 
as he was, seems to deserve Clive's interposition as the 
best one of the gamester circle. Are they all effective in 
bringing into higher relief the nobler figures of Clive 
and his quiet old comrade poring over old times ? And 
how do all of the group illustrate English military life ? 

Whether *'The Lost Leader" be considered with 
reference to Wordsworth and his '* abandonment of 
liberalism at an unlucky juncture" for *Mio repaying 
consequence, that I could ever see " (for Browning's 
own words about it, turn to Camberwell Brownings 



ENGLISH NATIONAL LIFE 471 

Vol. IV., Notes, p, 362), or to any such prominent 
liberal's defection from the people's party to the re- 
actionary movement, — in either case it illustrates the 
critical political situation of the middle of the century 
and the almost desperate rallying, largely in fear of 
France, to resist the most obviously wise liberating 
measures, lest freedom should broaden down from pre- 
cedent to precedent too smoothly and effectually. (See 
Notes, cited above, as to the Parliamentary bills of the 
time relating to religious, political, and educational 
freedom which Wordsworth opposed.) 

Does the poem as a whole accord with the love of 
the progress of liberty implied in the dramatic and 
more directly historical poems ? How does the last 
part (lines 25 to end) especially agree with the idea 
expressed in '^Avison" of political transformation 
being effected through going back as w^ell as forward ? 
Is it in agreement with it that the lost leader is bidden 
never to come back, but to fight on and menace the side 
that once was his, until strength is given it to master 
him and his new devotion ? 

What is *' the new knowledge," then? Is it 
knowledge of the inevitableness of the people's progress, 
against which energy cannot but assist through eliciting 
greater energy to accomplish it ? 

What does *< found the one gift of which fortune 
bereft us" imply? That the honor of the laureate- 
ship, the one gift the people could not confer, had 
been put in the hands of privilege through the curious 
combination of circumstances which made the revolu- 
tion in England half abortive, so that political liberty 
was gained in great measure, but with the retention of 
monarchy and nobility ? 

Is it significant of Browning's political sincerity and 



472 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

of his integrity as a poet, that his ** Jubilee Memorial 
Lines " did not take their color from the blazoning of 
the window they were written to accompany ? (See 
Camberwell Browiwtg^ Notes, Vol. XII., p. 385, for 
description of the window. ) Was it due to the gener- 
ally uninspiring nature of set themes, that he failed to 
honor the Queen and the Empire more particularly, 
do you suppose ; or because it rightly seemed better 
to him to give, in a Church, all honor to a higher 
Power ; or because his patriotism was always con- 
sistently of a sort that transcended the bounds of 
temporary institutions, and that held constantly in view 
further progress towards democratic ideals ? 

Is the little political credo^ ** Why I am a Liberal," 
large enough to meet definitely the problems pre- 
sented by political conditions that have arisen since 
Browning's death ? 

How does this confession of faith answer the 
questions suggested by the Jubilee Memorial lines ? 

Is it in keeping with the general trend of his treatment 
of political progress in England in this group of poems ? 

II. Topic for Paper, Classwork, or Private Study. 
— Phases of Social Life. 

Page 

Vol. Text Note 

" Halbert and Hob " ( — ) xi 124 303 

*' Ned Bratts" (1672) xi 149 306 

" A Blot in the 'Scutcheon" (early eighteenth 

century) iii 69 306 

" Martin Relph " (middle eighteenth century) . xi 107 300 

<< The Inn Album" (1839 c/Vffl) .... x 132 296 

"Donald" (middle nineteenth century) . . . xi 227 324 
*' Bishop Blougram's Apology " (late nineteenth 

century) xi 49 293 

Compare "Arcades Ambo," xii., 220, 369. 



ENGLISH NATIONAL LIFE 473 

Consult foregoing programmes on **A Blot in the 
'Scutcheon" and ** The Inn Album," ** Poems of 
Adventure and Heroism" for ** Donald," and ** The 
Evolution of Religion" and *' The Prelate" for 
** Bishop Blougram's Apology;" for these and the 
rest of the poems of this group, see, also. Introductions 
and Notes in Camberwell Brownings as here cited. 

Queries for Investigatmi a?id Discussion. — Is 
Browning's portrait in ** Halbert and Hob" of the 
inner relationship suddenly set up between a father 
and son, never before joined in any other common 
feeling that was not physical, a revelation of the way 
in which national life must always have begun ? 

Is the situation one that belongs to the beginnings 
of social life everywhere ? Is Enghsh life closer to 
such historic savage beginnings than that of any other 
European nation ? How has Browning given an 
English coloring to the universal story ? For Aris- 
totle's version, see Notes on the poem as cited. 

What view of crime intentionally committed against 
society as a later product of life than uncouth wildness 
is intimated by the fact that Halbert and Hob were 
not robbers or active offenders, but merely savage, 
totally undeveloped either by kindly or malicious 



associations 



Was the son's heeding of his father's experience, 
under similar circumstances, and loosing of his hold 
upon his throat, therefore, a result of heredity acting 
through the physical nature, or of mental influence 
bringing an external fact to bear upon his brain and 
heart, through comprehension, imagination, and sym- 
pathy ? What does the poet mean by it ? 

What relation has the idea of God to this climax of 
a common experience between the father and the son ? 



474 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Did **God" embody to them in the light of this 
strange new experience an external fear or mystery ? 

Is the suggestion to which this poem points, that 
*'a reason out of nature " must turn such hard hearts 
soft, one which leads to the idea that human right- 
eousness and mercy are only to be derived from an 
external God, or to the idea that the gradual modifi- 
cation of brutal, merely selfish instincts is due to seeing 
things from more than one point of view, in short, to 
social intercourse ? 

Does this story suggest that scientists are apt to 
attach too much importance to the investigation of the 
merely physical side of social influence, and that the 
field of heredity, in the sense of the transmission of 
prior life through physical relationship, is too narrow 
to account for all, even if it were known to account 
for the larger part of family and racial development ? 

Where do Ned Bratts and his wife. Tabby, stand in 
the scale of social development with relation to Halbert 
and Hob ? Are their sins, although of a less savage 
and more criminal kind, of so rude and roystering 
a nature that they seem to belong to a primitive 
period ? 

Are they and the court scene, upon which the 
twain burst in with eagerness to be hung and saved, 
characteristically English ; and in what respects is the 
whole picture true to the general aspect of this historic 
period — the twelfth year of the Restoration ? 

Is the portrayal of **the gentles," enjoying the 
sentencing to whipping, branding, and nose-slitdng of 
" Puritans caught at prayer," based on facts ? 

Does the presentation of the time to be gathered 
from the records of the Restoration period (see Pepys's 
Diary, the dramas of Wycherly and Mrs. Aphra 



ENGLISH NATIONAL LIFE 475 

Behn, Bishop Burnet's ** History of my own Times") 
warrant both the contrast in attitude between the 
*'QuaHty" and the **Folk," which is exhibited in 
this poem, and their fundamental kinship in crude 
feeling ? 

Is the humor of the poem too farcical ? Is it in 
this respect thoroughly in keeping with the historic 
quahty its broad realism reveals ? 

What value has the poem as an explanation of the 
great literary phenomenon of the time, — Bunyan's 
" Pilgrim's Progress " ? 

As an exposition of Bunyan's hold upon the popu- 
lar instinct and upon the secret of his awakening a 
rude and strongly animal people through fear toward a 
less boisterously Pagan life, and a piety characteristic 
of the English nation, is "Ned Bratts " as artistic as 
it is convincing ? 

How is the material managed so as to give the 
effect of a day and an incident as lurid as Bratts' s 
much-feared hell ? The hot season and its effects 
upon crops, country, cattle, and people strike inward 
more and more. The stewing court packed with 
idlers has a still more sweltering sensation when noise 
is added to the impression, hoots and yells announcing 
the ** brass-bold " pair, "brick-built of beef and 
beer." Then comes the blurting confession, rounded 
into the ear with provincial obsolete English, and 
the momentary hush that follows it is drowned in a 
strident uproar. 

What sort of beauty belongs to the poem .? The 
dramatic beauty of means perfectly adapted to a vital 
effect .? 

To pass from <'Ned Bratts" to **A Blot in the 
'Scutcheon," and to realize that both are constructed 



476 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

to reveal different phases of English life, probably not 
much more than half a century apart, is to have a 
lively appreciation of Browning's artistic versatility and 
evolutionary method in depicting life. Is the national 
peace and prosperity belonging to England in the 
early Georgian period such as to support the settled 
refinement and studious habits shovv^n in the main 
characters of ** A Blot" ? 

Is the social morality of this play a fixed quantity, 
as Mr. Henry Jones finds fault with it for being 
(** Browning as a Dramatic Poet," Poet-lore, Vol. VI., 
pp. 13-28, January, 1894), or is the whole plot 
founded, on the contrary, on the hollowness of social 
morality considered as a fixed quantity adding a rigid 
dignity to a family ? Is the sense of irretrievable 
sin in Mildred, as she at first feels it ; and is the 
** touch of unreality in the character of Tresham," as 
Mr. Jones complains, the necessary result of an ab- 
normal idea of family " honor ' ' ? And is it so de- 
picted in the drama in order to be dissolved and 
reduced by the tragic climax into something more real 
and human, — an individualized moral basis ? 

From a historical point of view is the play morally 
in advance of the time } Has the nineteenth century 
yet lived up to it ? 

The main interest of ** Martin Relph " is personal, 
and it has only the slightest link with history. 
What traces in the background refate it to the early 
Georgian era t 

Is Martin's confession an honest one, or a sham .'' 
Was he really to blame for the girl's death, and does 
he know it ? 

Does such a sudden test of a man's good will as 
came to Relph afford a fair glimpse of a nature's capa- 



ENGLISH NATIONAL LIFE 477 

bility for good, or would only such an opportunity to 
probe a soul's value be really trustworthy which gave 
time for a sober second thought ? Would a more 
developed nature respond more quickly to an appeal 
to its good will than a rudimentary one, like Relph's ? 
Or are all natures alike put to a sore trial when jeal- 
ousy complicates the question ? 

Would any representation of Enghsh life fail in 
naturalness, if gaming and sport had no part in them ? 
How are these presented in '*The Inn Album " and 
** Donald " ? Does Browning show in these poems 
and in '* Clive " an un-English prejudice against both 
of these amusements ? Or does his personal view 
find only an implied expression in *' Donald " against 
the common assumption that ** sport " brings out a 
man's courage ? 

Does Browning's idea of courage in that poem as 
well as in ** Clive " go deeper than mere physical 
risk ? 

Is there also in ** Donald," as in his bit of verse 
on vivisection, "Arcades Ambo," a special sense of 
chivalry in shielding brutes from man's abuse because 
of their helplessness and inequality with the human 
being ? 

Is he right in considering that the deserter and the 
vivisectionist are equally guilty of cowardice ? 

In what other respects are **The Inn Album" 
and ** Donald " especially English ? For instance, as 
to allusions, background, characters, and such char- 
acteristic episodes as the lady's description in " The 
Inn Album " of her husband and his parish. Concern- 
ing the latter. Professor Walker points out that Brown- 
ing has there given the most powerful expression to 
his negative criticism of forms of popular belief that 



478 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

have played a large part in the life of England. They 
are closely related to ** Ned Bratts," wherein a similar 
religion of fear is depicted, but at that earlier stage of 
national life it is a healthier religion, grotesque and 
crude as it may be, because the sentiments to which 
it appealed are primitive, and not nineteenth-century 
survivals, betokening starved and stunted human 
natures. 

** In * The Inn Album,' the nameless heroine, 
driven by the wrong that clouds her life to marry an 
obscure and narrow-minded country clergyman, de- 
scribes her existence w^ith him. The description is a 
faithful picture of life from which all interests except 
the interest of evangelical Christianity have withered 
away. It is not, and is not meant to be, a picture of 
the greater and larger-spirited evangelicals ; for the 
larger spirits of all sects and pardes invariably overleap 
their boundaries. But it is true to evangelicalism as 
seen by a small mind some fifty years ago. The 
limits of the husband's powers and attainments are 
carefully defined. He is a drudge — not harmless, 
for to describe him so would be to do him at once 
injustice and more than justice. Life, for him, has been 
constantly narrowing. Any scholarship he ever had 
is * gone — dropt or flung behind.' He has had no 
youth, his * January joins December.' . . . The influ- 
ence of an unenlightened theology on a nature small 
to begin with is easily conceived. . . . Heaven be- 
comes ' a vulgar bribe,' and Hell * a vulgar threat.' 
The former he * left wisely undescribed,' but * Hell 
he made explicit ' [Part IV., Hnes 240-415]. . . . 
There is probably nowhere a more powerful expo- 
sure of beliefs which, though inherently absurd, have 
been gravely taught and widely believed. The 



ENGLISH NATIONAL LIFE 479 

nearest parallel is perhaps the satires of Burns, with 
their merciless exposure of the extreme forms of 
Calvinism." 

Is the criticism of doubt-sapped religion adorned with 
culture's fruits, in '* Bishop Blougram's Apology," 
any less penetrating, or the picture any less typical, 
than this in **The Inn Album" of the parish priest 
** who in youth perhaps read Dickens " ? 

Is there any correspondence in the ground of criti- 
cism between these two different but equally represen- 
tative English clergymen ? What is that common 
ground ? Is it materialism in both cases, though in 
the one suppressed all natural exercise, and in the 
other dominant, polished, and self-satisfied, which 
case-hardens the spiritual-aspiration and benumbs 
growth ? 

What part does the assumption of superiority of 
class and position have throughout most of this group 
of Browning's English poems ? Is the claim to aris- 
tocracy and social rank indirectly treated as a source of 
moral weakness, or simply represented incidentally ? 

In ** Bishop Blougram," especially, what part does 
his consciousness of social superiority to Gigadibs and 
his desire to hold on to his supremacy play in his 
portrayal ? 

Is this bishop as representative, so far as his mate- 
rialism and desire to overtop his fellows are concerned, 
of the elements of decay and moral weakness in the 
nineteenth century, as the bishop of St. Praxed's is 
of the like elements in the Central Renaissance 
period ? 

Are materialism and the desire for over-lordship 
the enemies besetting the progress of human civiliza- 
tion to-dav ? 



Page 




Text Note 


66 


375 


lO 


364 


65 


375 


175 


388 


63 


374 



480 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

III. Topic for Paper y Classwork, or Private Study. 
— English Love of Country. 

Vol. 
" Home Thoughts from the Sea " (179 7- 1805) 
" Nationality in Drinks " (1805) . . . '. 

' ' Home Thoughts from Abroad ' ' ( ) 

*' The Englishman in Italy " (1846) 

" De Gustibus " (modern) 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — Eng- 
land's supremacy over the seas established by Nelson 
despite the growing powder of France under the great 
Napoleon, and constituting almost the only check to 
his schemes, and so maintaining England intact, this 
service rendered in the name of England to all her 
citizens, is the poet's theme of praise and prayer in 
** Home-Thoughts from the Sea." In ** Nationality 
in Drinks" Nelson, again, is the hero, any trifling 
anecdote of whom goes well with the toast to his 
memory. Are these patriotic tributes to England's 
sea-power more inspiriting, because fuller of human 
interest, than the love of the land at springtime 
which finds expression in **Home Thoughts from 
Abroad"? 

Are the unreal fancies suggested by the claret 
of France and the tokay of Germany compared to 
the merest incidental recollection of the hero. Nelson, 
suggested by the beer of England, a patriot's natural 
way of making his own country the most important 
even in trifles } But is it fair t 

Is its history or its natural aspect the most satisfy- 
ing element of attraction to the lover of his country .'' 
Must the historv of his country always disappoint 
the patriot at some times ? 



ENGLISH NATIONAL LIFE 481 

Browning wrote, in ** Home Thoughts from 
Abroad," of the superiority of even England's butter- 
cups over Italy's gaudy melon-flower. Ten years 
later, in ** De Gustibus," he contrasted the lover of 
Enghsh trees and lanes and fleeting girl and boy 
loves, greatly to their disadvantage beside the speaker's 
love for an old castle in the Apennines, or an Italian 
sea-side house to the southward, and a people awake 
to revolt against the Bourbons, even in the shape 
of the barefoot girl who brings in- melons. Did 
Browning change in his feeling for England ? If 
so, can you imagine why ? Compare with Elizabeth 
Barrett Browning's Preface to her ** Napoleon III. in 
Italy and Other Poems;" and with England's his- 
torical attitude of non-sympathy with republican up- 
risings in other countries. Or is it only to be supposed 
that Browning wrote these two poems to express, two 
different moods ? 

In ** The Englishman in Italy," however, does he 
again express, beneath all his pleasure in the unwonted 
beauty of an Italian scene, a deep-seated dissatisfaction 
with the slowness and hesitancy of England to take a 
manifestly humane and liberating step by passing the 
long-agitated Corn laws ? If this were so, is he more 
or less a lover of England ? 



31 



Portrayals of National Life: 
Italian 

I. Topic for Paper, Classwork, or Private Study, 
-Art in the Renaissance Period. 





Page 




Vol. 


Text 


Note 


ii 


93 


909 


V 


24 


287 


V 


36 


289 


V 


22 


286 


V 


45 


291 


iv 


52 


371 



<<Sordello" (i 184-1280) 

" Fra Lippo Lippi " (1412-1496) . . . 
<' Andrea del Sarto " ( 1486-153 1 ) . . . 
" Pictor Ignotus" (Florence, 15 — ) 
<< The Bishop Orders his Tomb " (Rome, 15 - 
'* Old Pictures in Florence " (critical) . 

For special studies of these poems, see Camberwell 
Brow7iingy Introductions and Notes as referred to 
above, and programmes *' The Poet" and **Art 
and the Artist." 

(Queries for I?westigatio?i and Discussioti. — If we 
take from Burckhardt, Pater, Symonds, Vernon Lee, 
and such other writers as Michelet, Emile Gebhart, 
Marc Monnier, who have uncovered the Renaissance 
stores for us, those traits which they agree upon as 
characteristic of the period, we shall have as our 
clews to guide us through the mazes of the subject 
these main threads : ( i ) A new pohtical and civic 
tendency, and therewith a new way of wielding war 
as an instrument of subtle statecraft — a subordination 
of brawn to brain ; (2) A new passion for culture. 



ITALIAN NATIONAL LIFE 483 

and therewith a revival of antique traditions, a new 
scientific curiosity for knowledge, a new faculty for 
art, plastic, pictorial/ and poetic ; (3) A new con- 
ception of love ; and (4) A new devotion to spiritual 
ideals. Courthope, who has perhaps the latest vv^ord 
on the subject, says : ** * The Renaissance ' is a phrase 
at once misleading and obscure. It seems in itself 
to mean * new birth.' But by some writers it is 
employed to signify a new-born spirit of revolt against 
the trammels of ecclesiastical authority and tradition, 
while others use ij: in a more restricted sense, as indi- 
cating a freshly awakened interest in the principles of 
classical literature, which had been allowed to slumber 
through the darkness of the Middle Ages. Neither 
of these definitions, however, can be said to cover all 
the facts of the case. For on the one hand the pio- 
neers of the movement were the Schoolmen, who were 
also the most powerful defenders of the authority of 
the Church ; and on the other, the stream of classical 
culture, however feeble and shrunken in volume, had 
never entirely ceased to flow. The Renaissance was 
in fact a tendency inherent in the condition of things, 
and it was promoted from different quarters by the 
independent action of all the greatest minds of the 
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. ... By some 
the ideas derived from their new studies were thrown 
into the logical form natural to them from their 
scholastic training ; others expressed their emotions 
in lyrical verse ; and others again, of a more lively 
or less reflecdve turn, imitated directly the objects 
immediately before their eyes. But they all wrote 
in their native tongues, and accordingly, while the 
Renaissance allied itself everywhere with the cause 
of political liberty, it at the same time developed the 



484 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

separate life of every European nation, by perfecting 
the structure of each national language." 

Does Browning show, in his portrayal of Sordello, 
that to his "mind the supreme force at work in the 
Renaissance was the awakening of a new political and 
civic spirit r That its master-motive was what Burck- 
hardt calls the awakening of **the individual in love 
with his own possibilities," which Vernon Lee speaks 
of as '* the movement for mediaeval democratic prog- 
ress " which Symonds describes as **the persistent 
effort after liberty of the unconquerable soul of Man," 
and what we should call to-day the democratic ideal ? 

As represented in Sordello, did the Renaissance 
consist in the slavish imitations of classical ideals, or 
in the absorption of a spirit akin to the ancient spirit 
which made for social and artistic ideals of a similar' 
nature ? 

In his manner of artistic expression in literature, 
what did Sordello do that was afterwards completed 
by Dante ? 

In what language had the literature of Italy been 
written up to that time ? 

In what way do we find the movement for liberty 
working in " Fra Lippo Lippi " ? 

Did the revolt against the authority of the Church 
which was one of the elements in the Renaissance 
include a revolt against its authority in moral matters 
as well as against its authority in intellectual and 
religious matters ? 

Does Andrea del Sarto, as Browning has portrayed 
him, stand for the type of artist that reflects an in- 
spired age simply because he was born in it, while he 
would have been incapable of inaugurating such an age 
and is incapable of taking the inspiradon farther on- 



ITALIAN NATIONAL LIFE 485 

ward ? Does he perfect the techjiique of art until the 
inner meaning is in danger of being lost ? 

If his age had been as uninspired as himself, would 
he have been able to indulge in such pertinent self- 
criticism ? 

In *< Pictor Ignotus " do you discover any signs of 
the Renaissance spirit ? How is it influenced by the 
unknown painter's own personality ? 

Is the Bishop at the opposite extreme from Fra 
Lippo Lippi in his attitude toward the Church, or is 
his desire to save in his tomb some of his wealth from 
the Pope (see Camberwell Brozvni?igy Notes, Vol. V., 
p. 293) a sign that he had also revolted from the author- 
ity of the Church ? 

Has the effect of the revival of learning on him 
been to inspire him with the desire to develop his 
possibilities ? 

Is his artistic attitude an undigested conglomerate 
of the past and the present growing out of an external 
appreciation of the worth of the past ? 

Burckhardt writes : ** We must insist that it was not 
the revival of antiquity alone, but its union with the 
genius of the Italian people which achieved the con- 
quest of the western world. " Does Browning in these 
poems show still more than this ; namely, that its 
effect in influencing the character of individuals differed 
as their characters difi^ered, and therefore bad influences 
as well as good influences resulted ? 

Besides illustrating so clearly the moving forces in 
the Renaissance, does the poet also give vivid pictures in 
these poems of the manners of the times ? 

The poems may be compared with accounts of the 
manners of the times given by Symonds in his 
•' History of the Renaissance." 



486 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Do you agree with Dr. Burton that poetry is a 
better vehicle for making the life of any time live 
before us than the dry records of history ? 

Of ** Sordello " Dr. Burton says : ** In our quest for 
Renaissance pictures * Sordello ' often rewards us. 
The Guelph and Ghibelline feuds and the Lombard 
League are interwoven with the personal history of the 
protagonist, and if after a reading of the poem we do not 
under sta?id those far-away and involved internecine 
quarrels, we do have ideas or images of medieval life 
— its hot gusts of passion, its political ambitions, its 
fierce coarse brutalities, its lyric episodes of love, its 
manifold picturesqueness — such as no mere chronicle 
could have given us. And this because a poet, 
saturating himself with contemporaneous documents in 
the British Museum, and thereafter visiting the scenes he 
would depict, really was able to reconstruct a long- 
done piece of human action so that it had body and 
soul, heat and substance." Again, of *' Fra Lippo 
Lippi " he says: ** In dramatic pieces like this and 
the still greater 'Andrea del Sarto' we are let into 
the very heart and get the blood beat of the blooming- 
time of creative painting. If ever a phase of life 
were done from the inside, as we say, it is here." 
(See Poet-lorcy Vol. X., pp. 66-76, No. I, 1898 ; 
** Renaissance Pictures in Browning" by Richard 
Burton.) "Old Pictures in Florence" is interest- 
ing in this connection because in it the poet shows 
the value of the early painters in the inauguration 
of new ideals in painting. Was it learning that set 
these painters off on a new tack, or did they have 
an inborn instinct toward more natural methods in 
art } 

Browning might have chosen to portray greater 



ITALIAN NATIONAL LIFE 487 

names in art during this period, but may have chosen 
for several reasons to portray the lesser. For ex- 
ample, would the clash between the great impulse 
of the time and individuals come out more dis- 
tinctly when those individuals did not stand as the 
complete representatives of that time's highest achieve- 
ments ? And would not greater interest attach to 
those who were in the daw^n of a movement, and, 
though failing themselves, pointed out the way to 
those who were to come after them ? Is this the 
case with Sordello ? 

II. Topic for Paper, Classwork, or Private Study, 
— Learning in the Renaissance Period. 

Page 
Vol. Text Note 
« Pietro of Abano " (1249-1315) , . . . xi 190 315 
*' A Grammarian's Funeral " (shortly after the 

Revival of Learning in Europe ) . , . . iv 248 394 

For hints upon these poems, see Camberwell 
Browningy Notes, as given above. 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — In 
" Pietro of Abano " we have presented to us two 
characters for study, the learned Pietro and the deceit- 
ful Greek. Was it usual at that time for one man to 
include so many branches of learning as the poet says 
Pietro did ? In these days of the revival of learning, 
was it usual for the Church to persecute the learned, 
because they were supposed to have become possessed 
of magic powers by evil means ? This was one of 
the natural consequences, was it not, of that phase of 
the movement which revolted against the Church ? 
(For history of the battles science has had to fight, 
see Draper's *' Intellectual Development of Europe " 



488 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

and Andrew D. White's ** The Conflict between 
Science and Theology.") Was this feeling against 
the learned shared by the unlettered people who were 
still under Church guidance ? While knowledge in art 
matters had attained full development, knowledge in 
science was in its infancy. What were the sciences 
as then practised, and whence was the knowledge 
derived ? (See books mentioned above.) Browning 
has represented Pietro to be the magician the people 
thought him, and which he doubtless thought himself, 
but might it be questioned whether he thought him- 
self capable of just the kind of miracles the poet 
represents him as performing ? 

Were Greeks in the habit of going to Italy at this 
time, and has Browning any historical foundation for 
representing a Greek with the sort of character he 
gives this Greek ? Does he not resemble strongly 
George Ehot's Tito Melema in *'Romola" ? 

Was Plato in especial favor in Italy ? (See 
Draper's ** Intellectual Development of Europe" 
for Cosimo de' Medici's attitude toward Plato.) 

Is the Greek's theory of ruling people for their 
good in harmony or at variance with the ideals of 
the Renaissance? 

What the Greek actually did was to rule them for 
his own good. Is that a danger which underlies all 
government based upon such principles ? Did Plato 
(see Notes) require a well-nigh impossibly developed 
man to make his theory work as it should ? 

The Grammarian is quite another type of the 
learned man. He is occupied with learning simply 
for its own sake. His department of learning not 
taking him in the direction of magic, would he have 
been likely to subject himself to the ill-will of either 



ITALIAN NATIONAL LIFE 489 

Church or people ? Does he truly represent one 
phase of learning in this period ? 

Although his desire has been to become possessed 
of the utmost knowledge^ he reahzed that his aims 
could never be attained upon earth, and trusted in a 
future life to complete the earthly life. Of this poem 
Dr. Burton writes, in the article before cited : '* I know 
of no lyric of the poet's more representative of his 
peculiar and virile strength than this, in that it makes 
vibrant and thoroughly emotional an apparently un- 
promising theme. In relation to the Renaissance, 
the revival of learning, the moral is the higher inspira- 
tion derived from the new wine of the classics, sa 
that what in later times has cooled down too often to 
a dry-as-dust study of the husks of knowledge, is 
shown to be, at the start, a veritable revelling in the 
delights of the fruit, — the celestial fruit which for its 
meet enjoyment called for more than a life span, and 
looked forward, as Hutton has it, to an * eternal 
career.' . . . *A Grammarian's Funeral,' then, is 
a noble vindication of the possibilities rather than the 
probabilities of that calling, having its historic inter- 
est in the implied high aims in scholarship of the time 
contrasted with later periods. No one Renaissance 
characteristic stands out in higher relief than this of 
learning." 

Does the atmosphere of these two poems seem as 
thoroughly Italian as those before considered ? 

Would the fact that the first one is narrative instead 
of dramatic make a difference in its impression of 
reality } 

While scholars like unto the Grammarian existed 
at that time, does it seem probable that he would have 
had such a circle of appreciators ? or is there some- 



490 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

thing in the appreciation of him which seems to 
smack of the broad sympathies of a Browning ? 

Does the rhythm of this poem seem to suggest 
the cUmbing feet of the followers who are carrying 
the body of their master to the mountain top for 
burial ? 

If you feel this, should you say it was due to the 
halting eifect produced by the alternation of short 
lines with weak endings ? 

Of these two poems, which has the greater number 
of allusions reflecting the time in which the scene is 
laid ? 

What are the chief characteristics of the art of 
'*Pietro of Abano," and how does it differ from "A 
Grammarian's Funeral " ? 

Mr. Symons declares it to be " a fine picture 
of true grotesque art, full of pungent humour, acute- 
ness, worldly wisdom, and clever phrasing and rhym- 
ing. It is written in a capital comic metre of Mr. 
Browning's construction." The poet gives the metre 
in the music appended. Singing a note to every 
word, it gives four stresses to the line, the feet being 
made up as follows : first foot, four syllables ; second, 
two ; third, four , fourth, two. In the second line 
the feet all have four syllables. The third is the 
same as the first ; the fourth, the same as the second 
except at the end. Does this sort of rhythm based 
upon a musical lilt have an effect of greater freedom 
than the ordinary poetic freedom, or does it seem more 
constrained ? If it seems constrained, is it because 
the element of quantity is made more prominent than 
it usually is in English verse } 

III. Topic for Paper ^ Classwork, or Private Study. 
— Life and Manners in the Renaissance Period. 



ITALIAN NATIONAL LIFE 491 

Page 

Vol. Text Note 

** My Last Duchess " ( ) iv 143 384 

" The Statue and the Bust " (1587) . . . iv 265 396 

"Cenciaja" (1599) ix 240 305 

"Beatrice Signorini " (middle seventeenth cen- 

tuvy) xii 229 370 

" The Ring and the Book " (1698). . . . vi i 325 

** In a Gondola " ( ) iv 184 389 

** A Toccata of Galuppi's " (1706-1785) . . iv 48 369 

For special study of these poems, see Camberzvell 
Browfiingy Introduction and Notes as given above, 
and programmes on " Husbands and Wives," *' Music 
and Musicians," and ** The Ring and the Book." 

(Queries for I?ivestigatio?i a?id Discussion. — Are 
the husbands represented in these poems fair types of 
the Italian husband ? 

Were murders such as those described in these 
poems common occurrences during the centuries they 
cover ? 

Did the interference of the Church and State in 
moral matters increase or decrease after the inaugura- 
tion of the Renaissance ? What do these poems 
show on that head ? 

Were the methods of the Church and State in 
punishing delinquents similar to those practised by 
individual husbands that considered themselves ag- 
grieved in any way ? 

When did heresies against the Church of Rome 
first begin to flourish, and how had heretics been 
treated ? Were Molinists subjected to persecution 
at the time of the scene of '* The Ring and the 
Book " ? 

Had the Renaissance influence in Italy died out 
by this time ? Had the Church gained control again r 



492 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Were the officials of the Church, popes and cardinals, 
better men morally than they had been in the re- 
nowned days of the Renaissance ? 

What effect did the character of the popes have 
on persecution ? Do you get the impression from 
**The Ring and the Book" that, although Italy 
was not so glorious in art and culture, the people 
were coming into a more individual life than they had 
enjoyed ? Is this true to history ? 

In how many of these poems do you find reflec- 
tions of the art spirit of the time, and what relations 
have the art to the rest of the story ? 

In *'Cenciaja" we have a picture of the way 
so-called justice was administered, and the personal 
reasons that sometimes served as an excuse for the 
execution of the innocent. Are there hints at the 
corruption of the highest officials of the Church in 
any of the other poems, or is this the only one that 
gives a gHmpse of this phase in the life of the time ? 

**In a Gondola" and **A Toccata" both speak 
of the decay of Venice. Were the mysterious 
** three " that the lovers are afraid of in the former 
a sub-committee of the Council of Ten formed in the 
latter days of the Venetian Republic, whose duty it 
was among other things to administer justice upon 
moral offenders. Or were they probably the brothers 
and husband of the lady, as suggested in the Notes } 

Has the poet pictured here just the sort of episode 
likely to occur in these dying days of Venice ^ 

What differences in manners and customs do you 
observe between ** The Ring and the Book" and 
" Sordello " .? For example, in the treatment of 
women, in the relations of Church and State ? By 
the time of Guido was the trial of the criminal a 



ITALIAN NATIONAL LIFE 493 

more assured thing than it had been ? Were inquisi- 
torial methods, however, still in vogue ? 

The several cities in which the scenes of these 
poems are laid are Ferrara, Florence, Rome, and 
Venice, What differences were there in the govern- 
ment of these cities, and consequently in their customs ? 
Are these differences indicated in the poems in any- 
way ? 

Do these poems reflect the social life of the time as 
vividly as the art poems reflect the art life ? 

For information upon all these questions, the books 
upon the Renaissance already cited may be consulted ; 
also Milman's "Latin Christianity," Draper's ** In- 
tellectual Development of Europe," first eight 
chapters in W. R. Thayer's ** The Dawn of Italian 
Independence," Hazlitt's ''Florentine Republic," 
Perren's ** History of Florence" trans, by Lynch, 
Horatio F. Brown's ** Historical Sketch of the Re- 
public of Venice." 

IV. Topic for Paper y Classworky or Private 
Study. — Phases of Political Life. 

Page 

Vol. Text Note 

"Luria" (1406) Hi 195 324 

" A Soul's Tragedy " (15 — ) iii 257 332 

*' King Victor and King Charles " (1730) . . i 237 327 

** Pippa Passes " (1830 — ) i 177 317 

"Italian in England" (18 — ) iv 170 387 

*' De Gustibus " (i8 — ) ....... iv 63 374 

For special studies of these poems, see Camberwell 
Brownings Introductions and Notes, as given above ; 
also programmes on ** Luria," "A Soul's Tragedy," 
** King Victor and King Charles," ** Pippa Passes." 

Queries for hives ligation and Discussion. — How 



494 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

do the relations of history to the story differ in this 
group of poems ? 

What were the conditions of Florence at the time 
when Luria served it as General ? Has Brown- 
ing truly reflected them ? (See Napier's ** Florentine 
History," chap. xxix. in Vol. III.) 

Are the suspiciousness and doubleness Florentine 
characteristics ? 

Though no such mercenary general as Luria ex- 
isted, such a character as his is easily imaginable. In 
creating this character and setting him in this Floren- 
tine environment, has the poet combined history and 
imagination in such a way as to produce a striking 
dramatic situation .? Are such combinations of truth 
and imagination more legitimate in art than the delib- 
erate changing of historical facts for artistic purposes, 
as the poet has done in " King Victor and King 
Charles" ? 

Has the poet developed Luria upon the foundation 
of a true Oriental temperament } What sort of 
people were there among the so-called barbarian 
Moors, and what had been the nature of the civiliza- 
tion they introduced into Europe ? (See Prescott's 
** Conquest of Granada," and Draper's **Litellectual 
Development of Europe," chap, xvi.) 

Does this play, besides its character-interest, sym- 
bolize the marriage of Oriental and Occidental ideals, 
as the second part of Goethe's " Faust " symbolizes 
the marriage of Greek and Northern ideals ? 

Were leaders of revolt as frequent in Italy as 
Browning makes Ogniben in '* A Soul's Tragedy " 
declare ? 

Do the histories of any of these leaders of revolt 
resemble that of Chiappino ? Were these revolts 



ITALIAN NATIONAL LIFE 495 

against petty local tyrants ? And did the Church 
frequently settle things by taking them into its own 
hands ? 

Might '* A Soul's Tragedy " be said to be typical 
of a historical condition prevailing in Italy at that 
time, rather than a picture of any actual occurrence r 
Does the atmosphere in this poem seem to be espe- 
cially Italian, or is its Italian setting rather external 
than anything else, the ethical problem being supreme ? 

What connection is there between the Kings of 
Sardinia and Italian history ? Has Browning drawn 
King Victor and King Charles better or worse than 
they appeared in history ? 

Has he made copious use of historical facts in the 
creation of the atmosphere of the play ? Is the delib- 
erate change in facts that he makes at the end allow- 
able for the artistic purpose of unifying Charles's 
character, and making it consistent throughout ? (For 
hints on the history, see Camberwell Browfiing, 
Notes, p. 287 fol.) 

In '* Pippa Passes " the civilization belongs to our 
present century, and crimes such as those committed 
in Asolo are still recorded in our own daily papers. 
The special atmosphere here comes, however, through 
local color and the background of historical events 
indicated through the Austrian police and Luigi. 
What actual state of things in Italy is reflected 
through them ? (See W. R. Thayer's *' The 
Dawn of Italian Independence '* and Cesaresco's 
** The Liberation of Italy.") 

Does the ** Italian in England " give a more com- 
plete picture of the condition of things in Italy during 
the struggle for independence than can be gained 
from ** Pippa Passes " ? (For history, see Camber- 



496 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

well Brownings Notes, Vol. IV., p. 387 fol. ; 
also Histories cited above.) 

Is this poem trebly interesting because of the beau- 
tiful incident it relates, the fine character drawing of 
the man, and its reflection of a most interesting period 
of Italian history ? 

In "De Gustibus " we have the poet's own feel- 
ing in regard to Italy expressed. Though it refers 
especially to the country, may it be taken as a symbol of 
the poet's deep interest in the art and life of Italy as 
reflected in his sympathetic portrayals ? 

Added to his historical interest, is his living sym- 
pathy for the Italian struggle for independence. 
Though he has not expressed this with the lyrical 
fervor that Mrs. Browning did (see her poems ** Casa 
Guidi Windows," ** First News from Villa Franca," 
and others of her Italian poems), has he none the less 
expressed it in his exquisite dramatic sketch of an inci- 
dent characteristic of the struggle in *' The Italian in 
England" ? 



Portrayals of National Life 
French 



I. Topic for Papery Classzvork, or Private Study. — 
Pictures of Historic Life, 

Page 
Vol. Text Note 
" Count Gismond " (twelfth century) . . . iv 145 384 
"Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli" (twelfth cen- 
tury) V 91 299 

"The Glove" (1540 c/rf^) iv 162 385 

** The Laboratory " (Ancien Regime) . . . iv 19 366 

*' Herve Riel " (1692) ix 220 302 

"Two Poets of Croisic " (seventeenth and 

eighteenth centuries) x 230 304 

For hints on the first four poems of this group, see 
the programme on '* Phases of Romantic Love; " for 
** Herve Riel," programme on ** Poems of Adven- 
ture and Heroism; " for the last poem, also, compare 
programme on " The Poet; " also Introductions and 
Notes in Camberwell Brozvning, as cited. 

Queries for lnvestigatio7i and Discussion, — Does 
" Count Gismond " present a true picture of Proven- 
9al life and chivalry ? 

As a love-story, is the poem representative of the 
possibilities of the time, or is it purer and simpler than 
is probable for that period ? 

Does it properly belong to the dawn of chivalry in 
France (as is here supposed) or to the later four- 
teenth century chivalry ? Why ? 
32 



498 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Was the abandonment of all claims of a selfish kind, 
the devotion and platonic quality of the love Rudel 
shows, the . real flower of chivalry, its characteristic 
expression ? 

Are its simplicity and almost childlike strain due to 
its romantic French quaHty ? How does it compare, 
for example, with Dante's expression of an equally 
chivalric love for Beatrice in the ** Vita Nuova " ? 
Is it possible to trace the reason for the contrast in the 
nature of the devotion shown by the two lovers to 
their differences as individuals merely, or to the differ- 
ences between them as members of a primitive Prank- 
ish and an older Italian stock ? (For information 
upon Rudel as a poet, see Justin H. Smith's **The 
Troubadours at Home," Vol. II., pp. 303-312 ; also 
upon customs in holding such tourneys as the one 
described in "Count Gismond," see Helen Leah 
Reed's *' Browning's Pictures of Chivalry," Poet-lore^ 
Vol. XL, pp. 588-601, No. 4, 1899 ; also Vernon 
Lee's ** Euphorion," Vol. II., chapter on Medieval 
Love; Mills's ** History of Chivalry; " Hallam's 
"Middle Ages," Vol.11., p. 456; Guizot's '* His- 
tory of Civilization," Vol. III., Lecture VII. For 
original romances of France, ** King Arthur and the 
Table Round," ** Tales after the old French of 
Chrestien of Troyes," by W. W. Newell, and 
Malory's " Morte d' Arthur.") 

In ** The Glove" a picture of the decadence of 
chivalric love tests appears under Francis I., the 
king who consciously sought to imitate and prolong 
the old days of chivalry. For this reason it shows all 
the more strikingly both the natural decay through 
selfishness of the old impulse to perform feats of valor 
and take any risk that a knight's lady might assign. 



FRENCH NATIONAL LIFE 499 

and the rise of a- new impulse, opposed to raere courtly 
imitation of deeds of prowess, but holding to that 
which was true in it, unselfishness in love. How are 
these elements of decay under old forms and re-birth 
in a new spirit illustrated in the knight De Lorge and 
the Court party on the one side, and the lady, Ron- 
sard, and her nameless, unknightly lover on the other 
side ? 

How do the three poets — Rudel, Marot, and 
Ronsard — exemplify the national spirit of France with 
reference to the dawn and passing of chivalry ? 

Is the fact of formalism in chivalry due to chivalric 
ideals becoming the fashion, patronized by the king 
and codifiied into customs from which falsity as well as 
sincerity could win glory ? What comment does the 
poem supply on this point of court corruption in the 
degrading relation of the king with his knight, De Lorge, 
and his wife ? 

But how does all this agree with the representations 
of cyclopaedias (Zell's Cyclopaedia, for example) and 
old-fashioned histories on chivalry, which attribute 
grossness to twelfth century chivalry and refinement 
to fourteenth century chivalry ? Is Browning's rep- 
resentation truer to life, in its implication that the 
youth of the chivalric movement, while it must afford 
examples of grossness, must also afford examples of 
genuineness, and for the same reason, i. e. because it 
was originally a natural growth, while its successful 
old age, as an institution of feudal courts, must afford 
examples of mere formalism and corruption ? 

In " The Laboratory " the transfer of the scene to 
a period in French civilizadon where agencies of a less 
muscular kind take the place of love tourneys and tests 
is noticeable. The potion takes the place of the sword. 



500 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

the medical skill of the Arabic or flVIoorish physicians 
and alchemists disputes influence in European life and 
love with the brute force of the native Frank. This 
is an agency, too, that a woman may handle. Does 
the use by women of poison, especially in France, 
make *'The Laboratory" a characteristic picture of 
life under the old regime ? 

What incident of the foreign policy of Louis XIV. 
resulted in the disaster to the French navy from which 
Browning's peasant hero Herve Riel delivered it } 

Is the honor France loves to pay her illustrious 
men of all kinds one that it is well a nation should 
confer, but that the heroes themselves should be as 
indiiFerent of receiving as Herve Riel was ? 

Is it the deed of the Breton pilot that Browning 
honors in this poem or his matter-of-course way of 
doing it ? 

Does the incident itself account for the spirited 
interest the poem excites ? Or is it due to the thrill- 
ing sense of sympathy with France and desire that 
she should escape shame, together with the personal 
interest in the hero's success, which the poet's skill 
works up, so bringing out the noble human quality in 
an incident altogether lacking in showiness ? 

As comment on a fame-loving nation, does '* Herve 
Riel" as well as **The Two Poets of Croisic " 
suggest some deep-searching criticism on the incon- 
sistencies and disproportion belonging to public opinion 
of that which is deserving of honor ? 

Was public readiness to believe in the significance 
of the lightning stroke that crumbled the ducal crown 
the real basis of Rene Gentilhomme's fame as 
prophet-poet ? 

What, in comparison with his fame, was the repu- 



FRENCH NATIONAL LIFE 501 

tation of Desforges worth ? In deriving his title to 
honor from the susceptibility of La Roque and Voltaire 
to feminine glamour, was his own share in his renown 
less important than Rene's, since Rene wrote his one 
famous poem in the whirl and prepossession of an 
impression that God had spoken veritably to him ? 

Does such sincerity have everything or nothing to 
do with fame ? Although it may make a work like- 
lier to be powerful in expression and so abler to 
impress others, must it of necessity do so, because 
of its sincerity ? 

Has cleverly calculated insincerity, on the other 
hand, such as Desforges' s sister advocated, a great 
deal to do with fame, as in his case it proved, but 
nothing to do with worth ? 

Is it conceivable that, in both cases, or either case, 
the work might have been fine without any reference 
to the conditions of sincerity or insincerity under 
which it m.ade its appeal to the public, and yet in 
both cases have had no recognizable effect at all 
upon the world ? 

Is good work sure not to be lost ? If its recogni- 
tion and fame are dependent upon happy conditions, 
and upon a public not only aware of the author's 
work, in the first place, so that it can know what it 
is, but, moreover, sufficiently in touch with him 
spiritually to appreciate its high, quality, — if all 
this must be presupposed before a work of original 
genius can have any chance at fame, is it not much 
more probable that great work has been produced by 
genius ahead of its time or at a time when the public 
was not open to its influence, and so failed to be 
cherished, than that this conjunction of circumstances 
has never occurred ? 



502 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Is it likelier that mediocre work can find its public 
quicker than good work can ? 

Is it less likely to stay popular ? Or does that 
depend, also, upon what public evolution is with 
reference to the work ; whether movement at the 
time is revolutionary and after it reactionary, and 
how long a period passes before a phase of public 
development capable of getting into sympathy with 
that work is attained, and whether, during that time, 
circumstances may cause the loss of the work alto- 
gether ? As examples of this possibility, look up 
the vicissitudes as to the work of the greatest Greek 
writers, ^schylus, Sophokles, Euripides, Sappho, — 
the first two unquestionably appreciated by their 
public ; the second two, for different reasons, more 
or less debatably appreciated. 

*' After the death of Julian and Libanius, one is 
tempted to think that nobody was really interested 
in literature any more ; but certain books had long 
been conventionally established in the schools as 

* classics,' and these continued to be read in ever- 
dwindling numbers, till the fall of Constantinople 
and the Renaissance. ^ The eccentricities of the 
tradition would form material for a large volume. 
As in Latin it has zealously preserved Vergil and 
Avianus the fabulist, so in Greek it has multiplied 
the MSS. of Homer and of Apollonius the Kitian 

* On Sprains.' As in Latin it practically lost 
Lucretius save for the accident of a single MS., and 
entirely lost Calvus, so in Greek it came near to 
losing ^schylus, and preserved the most beautiful 
of the Homeric hymns only by inadvertence. In 
general, it cared for nothing that was not useful in 
daily life, like treatises on mechanics aod medicine. 



FRENCH NATIONAL LIFE 503 

or else suitable for reading in schools. Such writers 
as Sappho, Epicharmus, Democritus, Menander, 
Chrysippus, have left only a few disjointed fragments 
to show us what precious books were allowed to die 
through the mere nervelessness of Byzantium. . . . 
Rome and Alexandria . . . liked order and style ; 
they did not care to copy out the more tumultuous 
writers. The mystics and ascetics, the more uncom- 
promising philosophers, the ardent democrats and 
enthusiasts generally, have been for the most part 
suppressed." (Prof. Gilbert Murray's "History 
of Ancient Greek Literature," p. 2.) 

What has been the fact, historically, as to the public 
fame of modern writers ? For information as to 
Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Keats, Coleridge, 
etc., and the relativity of fame in general with reference 
to "The Two Poets of Croisic," see "The Value 
of Contemporary Judgment" {Poet-lore, Vol. V., 
pp. 201-209, April, 1893). 

If genius runs the risk of being overrun by medi- 
ocrity gaining through favorable circumstances such 
vogue as befell these two poets of Croisic, and of being 
suppressed altogether by lack of public culture, is an 
instructed, unbiassed, and sympathetic pubhc opinion a 
vital need everywhere r 

In depicting the precarious conditions for fame in a 
country so sensitive to honor, and so superior to most 
other countries in affording opportunities and accord- 
ing praise to excellence, is it to be inferred that Brown- 
ing considered French enthusiasm for literary or artistic 
talent was in itself a vv^eakness ? 

In *' French Enthusiasms Satirized in Browning's 
* Two Poets of Croisic,' " Dr. H. E. Cushman points 
out that ** during the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 



504 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

turies when the two poets of Croisic lived, that ancient 
regime of France was peculiarly adapted to bring into 
lurid light the enthusiasms of which humanity is capa- 
ble. The court of Louis XIII. was the beginning, 
the court of Louis XIV. the maturity, and the court 
of Louis XV. the ending of the dignified, good-man- 
nered, and most courtly court of European monarchy. 
The two poets of Croisic lived in a society in which 
order, suitability, and politeness were the ruling ideas, 
impersonated by the adults and taught to the children. 
Never has politeness turned casuistry into its service to 
such a degree and elaborated its manners for such 
studied effects. There is no place nor time where we 
should less expect enthusiasms than the time and society 
that became enthusiastic over Rene Gentilhomme and 
Paul Desforges Maillard. Consequendy the enthu- 
siasms stand out the more plainly. 

** It was the eighteenth century — when French 
society was most supremely ordered and the individuals 
thereof apparently in perfect self-control — that there 
appeared that age of enthusiasm called the sentimental 
period, which later, among the common people, had 
its counterpart in the French Revolution. It was this 
pohte crowd that affected now to admire the country, 
now to return to nature ; now it was a delight in sim- 
plicity. The Queen had a village for herself at the 
Trianon, where, as some one says, * dressed in a frock 
of white cambric muslin and a gauze neck handker- 
chief, and with a white straw hat,' she fished in the 
lake and saw her cows milked. What, suppose you, 
did the individual Frenchman or Frenchwoman care 
about muslin, cows, fish, and simplicity ? Then there 
arose enthusiasms for village people, for the sentiment 
of tenderness, for the feeling of natural affection. 



FRENCH NATIONAL LIFE 505 

Then polite society turned to religions, to consider- 
ing the soul. It practised trying to be human. 
These were some of the many enthusiasms of that 
society of which * The Two Poets ' is a criticism. 
It was the most polite society in the w^orld, but as a 
society it was capable of enthusiasm that in extent and 
intensity have scarcely been equalled. 

** The French enthusiasm, as the subject under 
criticism of Browning in this poem, is a social enthu- 
siasm. A social body is an organic being with less 
than human traits, caprice, sense of responsibility, etc. 
The satire involved here is directed at civilization in 
which such enthusiasms could be very frequent, for 
such a civilization is a reversion to savagery. Yet 
such hypnotic enthusiasms are perfectly natural to the 
French mind because of its tendency to isolate the 
present moment from its associations." (^Poet-lore ^ 
Vol. XL, pp. 382-395, No. 3, 1899.) 

As a criticism of French enthusiasm, is the poem a 
satire upon artistic enthusiasm or upon civilization in 
general, or merely upon elements that thwart and bias 
its effectiveness as an instrument in the recognition of 
artistic worth ? Instead of being a hit at the inferiority 
of French judgment because of its French quality of 
enthusiasm, or because of its social quality, in com- 
parison with an unenthusiastic, unsocialized apprecia- 
tion of a work of art, — if there is such a thing, — is 
the poem, on the contrary, an exposition merely of 
the imperfect conditions under which fame is attain- 
able, implying, consequently, the lack of an impartial 
and instructed public opinion ? Is the poem, there- 
fore, with reference to its story, a subtle corrective of 
elements of credulity, as in Rene's case ; of gallantry, 
as in Paul's case ; and of general dependence upon 



5o6 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

the authority of critics, as in the case of La Roque's 
and Voltaire's prestige with the public ; all of which 
are detrimental to the right direction of enthusiasm ? 

In '*The Two Poets of Croisic," two friends, 
apparently an elderly poet and a young woman, seated 
beside a log fire in Brittany, are watching the flaring up 
and dying out of the colored flames rising from the 
driftwood, while the poet talks and tells his com- 
panion stories. Is this scene-setting of the poem well 
suited to its subject and significance ? 

What relation to the theme have the Prologue and 
Epilogue ? Is the latter told by the young woman ? 
How do you gather this ? Is it in response to the 
man's request? (See closing lines of ** The Two 
Poets.") 

Of the story of the two Croisikese poets, Mr. 
Arthur Symons writes that the first part as preserved, 
on account of Voltaire's relation with it, is told pretty 
literally; but that ** the sequel is somewhat altered. 
. . . Voltaire's revenge when the cheat was discov- 
ered, so far from being prompt and immediate, was 
treacherously dissimulated, and its accomplishment 
deferred for more than one long-subsequent occasion. 
Desforges lived to have the last word, in assisting at 
the first representation of Piron's * Metromanie,' in 
which Voltaire's humiliation . . . is perpetuated for as 
long as that sprightly and popular comedy shall be 
remembered." 

As to the metrical effects of the poem, the same 
writer calls attention to the fact that although the poem 
is written in ottava rima, *' there is not one double 
rhyme from beginning to end. It is difficult to see 
why Mr. Browning, a finer master of grotesque com- 
pound rhymes than Byron, should have so carefully 



FRENCH NATIONAL LIFE 507 

avoided them in a metre which, as in Byron's hands, 
owes no little of its effect to a clever introduction of such 
rhymes. The lines (again of set purpose, it is evident) 
overlap one another without an end-pause, where in 
Italian it is almost universal, — namely, after the sixth 
line. The result of the innovation is far from success- 
ful : it destroys the flow of the verse and gives it an 
air of abruptness. Of the liveliness, vivacity, and 
pungency of the tale no idea can be given by 
quotation." 

It may be taken for granted that the metrical singu- 
larities thus noted were intentional. What was the 
poet's design? — To make the story seem like one told 
by the fireside, and to give it the abrupter effect of talk ? 

II. Topic for Papery Classwork, or Private Study. 
— Glimpses of the Bonapartes. 

** Incident of the French Camp " ( 1806) 
" Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau " ( 1868 ) 

Compare programme on " Poems of Adventure and 
Heroism " for more special study of the first of these 
poems ; see also, and for the second poem especially. In- 
troduction and Notes, Camherwell Browriing, as cited. 

Queries for hivestigation a?id Discussio?i. — Are the 
traits of both Napoleon I. and Napoleon III., as 
Browning has brought them out in these two poems^ 
peculiarly characteristic of the two men and of their 
relations with France ? 

What elements of national glory are emphasized in 
the " Incident of the French Camp," and what in 
** Prince Hohenstiel " .'' 

Are the military setting of the first poem and the 



Page 




^ol. Text 


Note 


iv 140 


383 


ix I 


275 



5o8 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

utterly selfless devotion of the youth, significant of the 
man and the time therein painted ? And in the second 
poem what is told of the different period and the 
second Bonaparte's place with reference to it, simply 
by revealing the loneliness of the Emperor, who is 
imagining his confidences poured forth to a woman's 
sympathetic ears while he smokes and dreams ? Is 
this difference in the two poems, as pictures in the 
historic life of France, traceable to the contrasts 
between the characters of the two rulers and the 
devotion they could call forth in their people ? Or is 
it due, even more, to the historic conditions as to the 
relations of France with the rest of Europe and to the 
anti-heroic national sentiment which had displaced 
such enthusiasm as the youth of the first poem 
represents ? 

Was the war feeling of France after the Revolution, 
elicited as it was against the coalition of all the kings of 
Europe to stamp out the life of the young Republic, a 
healthy national sentiment, only deteriorating slowly 
under the empire, when its victorious self-assertion 
took up less and less defensible projects of aggression ? 

How far should you characterize the quality of the 
national sentiment as healthy under the second 
Napoleon, with reference, for example, to the Italian 
wars referred to in *' Prince Hohenstiel," and to the 
war with Germany, on the threshold of which the 
Emperor is represented in this poem as hesitating ? 

Is it a mistake commonly made by historians and 
by the public to attach importance to the two Bona- 
partes exclusively as responsible for the distinctive life 
of France at the epochs when they respectively 
represented her ? Does the atmosphere of these 
poems indirectly tend to correct this by implying the 



FRENCH NATIONAL LIFE 509 

relation the successes of the one and the ultimate fail- 
ure of the other bore to the national sentiment they 
interpreted ? 

What important resemblance in uncle and nephew 
accompanies in these two poems the differences glanced 
at in the vitality, magnetic quality, and following of 
the two men ? Is it shrewdly designed by the poet 
that, in the first poem, the musing of Napoleon should 
be presented as the main trait in the sketch of him 
there presented, as he stands contemplating the possi- 
bility of the failure of all his plans if there is a 
moment's wavering of the battle line (lines 3-12) ? 
Is the climax realistic that, with the assurance of victory 
the boy brought him, his plans are represented again 
to be the main interest, — ** The chief's eye flashed; 
his plans soared up again like fire" ? 

In the second poem, is the musing of Napoleon III. 
equally a true characteristic ? But under what difi^er- 
ent circumstances as to only half-expected failure and 
real disaster in the outcome, is the pose caught by the 
poet for this second, more finished portrait ? 

Different ranges of plans for boulevard and theatre 
building and so on, for alleviation of poverty along with 
suppression of Fourierism and Proudhonism, are made 
the subject-matter of the second Emperor's aims. Are 
these characteristic both of the man and the time ? 

To what extent is the nephew himself a subject — 
like the boy of the first poem — of the personal mag- 
netism of the first Napoleon ? 

Has Browning brought this out effectively and with 
historical fidelity in *' Prince Hohenstiel " r What, for 
example, in his defence of himself does the Prince 
mean by the two blots and the line he draws between 
them instead of making another blot ? 



5IO BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

** These two blots are a pictorial parable, giving at a 
stroke the gist of one of the most important of Louis 
Napoleon's early pamphlets on the policy of the first 
Napoleon, * Des Idees Napoleoniennes,' What he 
really did in that pamphlet was simply to draw the 
line of connection ' five inches long and tolerably 
straight ' between le frincipe d^autoritCy the principle 
of authority, in other words the Empire of my uncle, 
and r orgajivzation democratique, the government by 
universal suffrage, recognizing the will of the people as 
the source of Bonapartist authority, or to adapt one of 
his own effective phrases in the proclamation of 1857, 
the * only sovereign I may recognize in France is the 
People.' In his own account to his mother of 
the unsuccessful Strasbourg attempt that sent him to 
America he gives the dialogue between the Command- 
ing General and himself thus : 

** * What would you have done if you had been suc- 
cessful ? ' * I would have given France the Empire.' 
* You would have overturned the Government ? ' * I 
would have submitted the Empire to the vote of the 
People.' 

" What he wanted to do theoretically in his pamph- 
lets and vainly in the two abortive little buds of revolu- 
tion at Strasbourg and Boulogne he held on to and came 
to do actually later after the many set-backs and vicissi- 
tudes the world knows. And as to what meant cer- 
tain things he did of old which puzzled Europe — 
why, you '11 find them plain merely in the expansion 
of this metaphor of the two blots he found ready to his 
hand and attempted to connect. 

<* In many a speech he indicates as clearly what 
his abhorrence of making a third blot meant. In 
his Message of 1849 to the Legislative Assembly 



FRENCH NATIONAL LIFE 511 

of the Republic, he said : < I will not cradle the 
people in illusions and Utopias. My course is defi- 
nite and shall consist on the one side in boldly 
taking the initiative in ameliorations . . . and on 
the other side, in repressing with severity . . . 
disorderly and anarchical schemes.' In his letter of 
1849 ^° Prince Napoleon-Jerome he raps his radical 
cousin's knuckles very sharply to give him distinctly to 
understand that he will maintain nothing but the 
m.ost moderate policy. The casual references Brown- 
ing makes his Prince introduce to Proudhon, Fourier, 
and Comte serve to remind us not only of the deep- 
reaching ideas that were mooted at this time in France, 
but also that the second Emperor carried out his pro- 
gramme against such ideas by depriving Fourier's 
friend, Comte, of his professorship at the Paris Poly- 
technic School, and by imprisoning Proudhon twice 
for uttering those criticisms upon property which 
the w^orld has not yet done discussing. . . . The 
one fact in Louis Napoleon's background of life 
being emulation of Napoleon the Great, and the 
second, as incontrovertibly present in the social atmos- 
phere of Europe in the seething middle of the nineteenth 
century, being the uprising people, the course of 
political achievement adopted by a man capable only of 
carrying ' incompleteness on a stage ' would be to 
attempt a fusion of the two pre-established facts, 
attaining rule through democratic means, but per- 
mitting no rash radical measures to create a third 
strange fact to complicate the simple aim of making use 
of what already is. Therefore the means he had to 
take were to restrain extremists and idealists (of 
whom he was one himself once when he was only 
an aspiring voice of liberty in Italy in i 83 i, as a young 



512 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

hothead not having more material interests to consider) 
and to befriend in material ways the retarded bulk of 
the people. 

" The equable sustainment and unification of all parts 
of the body politic was his one political doctrine and 
aim. A simple policy in theory, but in practice as 
hard a job as an Imperator ever had, and as perilous, 
since he must hold a foot on two inherently opposite 
tendencies and hold steady what never stays still. 
The position of strain required to keep the balance 
might be understood as passiveness by those who did 
not see against what obstacles the pose was maintained. 
So the energy of the Laocoon might seem somnolency 
to those from whom the coils of the serpent were 
hidden." (See ** Modern Imperialism as shown in 
Browning's ' Prince Hohenstiel,' " Poet- lore, January, 
1900.) 

How are the other exemplifications of his policy 
brought forward by the Prince illustrated by the 
historical facts } (See Introduction and Notes in 
Camberwell Brownings as cited, for information ; also 
Drury's ** History of France," Victor Hugo's "His- 
tory of a Crime" and ** Napoleon the Less,'' also 
** The Works of Napoleon III.," and contemporaneous 
accounts. In reading these make due allowance for 
partisanship on all sides-) 

What does Browning's picture of the third Bona- 
parte amount to as criticism ? Does it represent a 
hypocrite ; or a man of good intentions and fair ability, 
without enough originality or force to strike out new 
methods ? 

Why does he fail, according to Browning, when he 
had so long been successful and serviceable ? Is it 
because he was too weak to maintain a position in the 



FRENCH NATIONAL LIFE 513 

nature of things becoming untenable ? Upon this 
question the article already cited continues : — 

''Browning's criticism of Louis Napoleon's acts in 
the second part of the poem is as unexplicit as his 
interpretation of his character. In explaining what 
his policy was he has made him imply its inherent 
weakness and temporary worth. The self-glorification, 
the self-destroying self-indulgence of the Bonapartist 
ambition, slumbering at the heart of the humanitarian 
enthusiasms which genuinely attracted him, growing 
more and more powerful within him, are more and 
more disqualifying him from keeping an equable bal- 
ance between two essentially opposed ideals — the 
principles of authority and of democratic progress. The 
spirit of the time, moreover, and the intrigues of his 
own reactionary court are combining to make it 
increasingly hard to keep the equipoise, even if he 
personally were not finding the force to contend with 
the exigencies of his own policy failing him." 

III. Topic foj- Pape?', Ciasswork, or Private 
Study. — Pictures of Social Life. 

-^ Page 

Vol. Text Note 

'* Gold Hair : A Legend of Pornic " . . . . v 147 305 

"Respectability" (1850, circa) iv 115 405 

" Apparent Failure " (1856) v 273 316 

" Red Cotton Night-cap Country "( 1850-18 70) xi 2 83 

'< Fifine at the Fair" (1872) ix 68 288 

For more special study of *' Red Cotton Night-cap 
Country," turn to *< Single Poem Studies;" of 
**Fifine" to programme "Portraits of Husbands 
and Wives ; " and of •* Gold Hair" to programme 
of ** Folk Poems;" also, for all, and especiallv the 
last two poems, to Introductions and Notes in Camher- 
well Brownifig, as cited. 

33 



514 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Queries for Investigatioji and Discussion. — Is there 
a resemblance between the primitive, almost legendary, 
life touched upon in ** Gold Hair" and the sophisti- 
cated nineteenth-century life painted in the ** Red 
Cotton Night-cap Country"? Is the link between 
them, the modified yet continuous power of the 
Church in French society to dominate the natural 
desires of the flesh ? Or is it rather the unsuppressible 
love of life and enjoyment inherent in the race which 
causes its piety perpetually to contend with its pleasures ? 

Is the main danger of this accommodation between 
artistic, life-enjoying instincts and a largely formal 
religion that it makes a sincere and thoroughly ration- 
alized habit of life difficult? 

What reason do the two poems mentioned afford 
that Browning meant each, in its different way and 
period of time, to illustrate these influences and char- 
acteristics of French life ? 

The religious moral of the Pornic legend, against 
the innate wickedness of man's heart, is often taken in 
earnest. Should it be ? And, if so, how does it 
agree with his more obvious illustration in the nine- 
teenth-century true-story poem of the logical incon- 
sistencies and self- stultifying weakness of Miranda's 
allegiance to the conventional churchly ideals of sin ? 
Does he acknowledge that his course was evil, while 
at the same time persisting in it and experiencing the 
value of a genuine emotion ? 

Why doss Browning treat the hypocrisy and decep- 
tion of the golden-haired girl of Pornic so lightly in 
comparison with this doubleness of Miranda, which he 
seems to expose to view as an intellectually unhealthy 
condition for moral development ? Does the time 
make the difference ? 



FRENCH NATIONAL LIFE 515 

In ** Respectability " a case of more wilful revolt 
against conventional ideals is presented. Is it equally 
characteristic of the same general conditions in French 
social life ? 

The anomalies and difficulties behind the revolt are 
not expressed as in the longer poem, but a general 
justification of the course the pair have taken is implied 
in the speaker's monologue. Where do they stand 
with reference to the others as exponents of French 
social life ? Is their position intellectually stronger and 
morally weaker than that of Miranda ? 

What light does the suggestion that George Sand 
and Alfred de Musset are here presented throw 
upon it r 

In the person of Fifine and her Gypsy companions 
the extreme opposition to any recognized conventional 
ideals, either more or less formal, genuinely religious, 
or really rational, is presented. The relation of Elvire 
and of Elvire' s husband to this mode of life is French 
in stage-setting merely, and in situation is not pecul- 
iarly French. 

In the local color, impressions of scenes and people, 
and in picturesque effects that are peculiar to Brittany 
and Normandy, are Browning's French poems especially 
effective ? What passages are particularly pictorial ? 

In the verses that celebrate the little grewsome build- 
ing so closely associated with life in Paris, the Morgue, 
what has Browning done to characterize the subject ? 
Does the quality of ''Apparent Failure" come out 
best in the French allusions and associations (for these, 
see Notes) and in the little descriptive touches that with 
brief words make the scene inside the building stand 
out ? Is the moral comment expressed in the con- 
cluding stanza the main point of the poem ? Or 



5i6 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

is it rather in the implication of the whole that fail- 
ure of the most desperate kind, such as is depicted 
here, is only apparent failure, that the genuineness of 
soul which has so brought the wretchedest, of their 
own will, to face death's unknown, proves human 
worth and dignity ? 

Why did the poet think, both when he saw the 
three men ** enthroned each on his copper couch," 
and, later, when thinking it over, that their sin was 
"atoned" (lines 21-27) •'' Was he thinking of any- 
kind of atonement, except that which their own exer- 
cise of their human desire to conquer the evils of life 
had wrought ? 

Is the human daring in the face of death here recog- 
nized virtually the same as that which exalts the soul 
in **Prospice," although it is the reverse unhappy 
side of the universal experience ? 



Portrayals of National Life : 

German 

Topic for Paper, Classzvorky or Private Study. — 
Phases of Intellectual and Artistic Development in 
Germany. 

Page 

Vol. Text Note 

*' Fust and his Friends " (1457) .... xii 170 356 
"Johannes Agricola in Meditation" (1492- 

1566) V 20 286 

"Paracelsus" (1493-1 541) i 35 308 

** Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha " ( ) . . iv 133 382 

"AbtVogler" (1749-1814) v 169 308 

For special hints on these poems, see Introduc- 
tions and Notes to Camberzvell Brownifig, as given 
above ; also programmes ** Music and Musicians " 
and ** Paracelsus." 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — '* Fust 
and his Friends" is an exceedingly lively dialogue 
between the inventor of printing and his ignorant 
friends who imagine him to have made a compact 
with the devil. 

How has Browning combined truth with legend in 
this poem .? Was the real John Fust ever accused of 
magic ? There is a story to the effect that he was 
arrested as a magician in Paris, on account of the ex- 
actness of the copies of the Bible which he took there 
on sale, but the storv is said to be untrue. 



5l8 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Was the real Faust accused of being a magician ? 
** The Legend of Dr. Faustus," Bayard Taylor says, 
*' first took form in the sixteenth century, while the 
belief in witchcraft and diabolical agencies was still prev- 
alent among the people. The earliest edition of the 
story, upon which all later variations were based, ap- 
peared in 1587. . . . There was an actual Dr. Faust, 
born in 1490, who studied at the University of Wit- 
tenberg, and is said to have been acquainted with 
Melanchthon. What special reasons there were for 
making him the hero of a story, cannot be ascertained 
with any certainty ; but the charge of a compact 
with evil spirits was frequently made against any 
man of more than usual knowledge. Even Luther 
believed in the constant activity of a personal and vis- 
ible devil, whom he imagined he sometimes beheld. 
.. . . The behefin witchcraft survived among the peo- 
ple long after law and theology had discarded it, and 
a dramatized version of * Faust ' was one of the favor- 
ite plays given in puppet theatres, at fairs, or other 
popular festivals. ' ' ( See chapter on Goethe' s " Faust ' ' 
in Biiyard Taylor's ** Studies in German Literature.") 

What was the state of belief in regard to magical 
agencies at this time ? (See Andrew D. White's 
** The Warfare of Science with Theology," Vol. L, 
chaps, xi. and xii., and Draper's *' Intellectual Devel- 
opment of Europe," chaps, xiii. and xviii., p. 407 ; 
''The Philosophical Peculiarities of the Age of 
Faith.") 

Was the Fust of this poem right when he feared 
his printing would disseminate lies as well as the 
truth ? 

On the whole, does this little poem reflect the 
atmosphere of the time, while in the person of Fust 



GERMAN NATIONAL LIFE 519 

it symbolizes the nineteenth-century attitude of what 
we might call the mystical scientist ? 

How does Fust's philosophy, written near the end 
of Browning's life, compare with that of Paracelsus, 
written near the beginning ? 

In "Johannes Agricola " has Browning succeeded 
in making the doctrine of predestination beautiful from 
an artistic point of view, at the same time that he has 
exhibited the loathsomeness of such a belief ? 

Is this effect gained through the fact of the poet's 
having entered into the devout and trusting spirit of 
the man ? George Willis Cooke (see Notes) says 
Browning has not exactly represented his standpoint. 
What were the beliefs of Agricola, and how did he 
differ from Luther? (See E?icyclopadia Britawnica^ 
articles " Antinomians " and ** Agricola.") 

In the person of Paracelsus we see reflected the re- 
volt against the thought of that time combined with 
survivals of a past learning. What was the religious 
and intellectual state of Germany then existing ? 

These passages from Draper's ** Intellectual Devel- 
opment of Europe" serve to illustrate in part the 
conditions at that time: **To this denial of papal 
authority he [Luther] soon added a dissent from the 
doctrines of purgatory, auricular confession, absolution. 
It was now that the grand idea which had hitherto 
silently lain at the bottom of the whole movement 
emerged into prominence — the right of individual 
judgment — under the dogma that it is not papal 
authority which should be the guide of life, but the 
Bible, and that the Bible is to be interpreted by pri- 
vate judgment. ... At this moment there was but 
one course for the Italian court to take with the 
audacious offender, for this new doctrine . . . was 



520 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

dangerous to the last extreme. . . . Luther was 
therefore ordered to recant, and to burn his own works, 
under penalty, if disobedient, of being excommuni- 
cated, and delivered over unto Satan. But Luther 
was not to be intimidated ; nay, more, he retaliated. 
He denounced the pope. . . . He called upon all ' 
Christian princes to shake off his tyranny. In the 
presence of a great concourse of applauding specta- 
tors, he committed the volumes of the canon law 
and the bull of excommunication to the flames. . . . 
The Emperor Charles V. found it necessary to use 
all his influence to check the spreading Reforma- 
tion. But it was already too late, for Luther had 
obtained the firm support of many personages of 
influence, and his doctrines were finding defenders 
among some of the ablest men in Europe. . . . While 
Germany was agitated to her centre, a like revolt 
against Italian supremacy broke out in Switzerland, 
. . . and found a leader in Zuinghus. 

*' Even at this early period the inevitable course of 
events was beginning to be plainly displayed in sec- 
tarian decomposition ; for while the German and 
Swiss Reformers agreed in their relation toward the 
papal authority, they differed widely from each other 
on some important doctrinal points." 

Also these passages from White's ** Warfare of 
Science with Theology " : — - 

" The impulse thus given to childish fear and 
hatred against the investigation of nature was felt for 
centuries ; more and more chemistry came to be 
known as one of the * seven devilish arts.' Thus 
began a long series of demonstrations against magic 
from the centre of Christendom. In 1437, and 
again in 1445, Pope Eugene IV. issued bulls ex- 



GERMAN NATIONAL LIFE 521 

horting inquisitors to be more diligent in searching 
out and delivering over to punishment magicians and 
witches who produced bad weather, the result being 
that persecution received a fearful impulse. But the 
worst came forty years later still, when in 1484 there 
came the yet more terrible bull of Pope Innocent 
VIII. known as Summis Desiderafites, which let in- 
quisitors loose upon Germany, with Sprenger at their 
head, armed with the Witch Hammer. . . . Similar 
bulls were issued in 1504 by Julius II., and in 1523 
by Adrian VI. 

**The system of repression thus begun lasted for 
hundreds of years. The Reformation did little to 
change it, and in Germany, where Catholics and 
Protestants vied with each other in proving their 
orthodoxy, it was at its worst. On German soil more 
than one hundred thousand victims are believed to 
have been sacrificed to it between the middle of the 
fifteenth and the middle of the sixteenth centuries. . . . 

** Of course, the atmosphere created by this per- 
secution of magicians was deadly to any open begin- 
nings of experimental science. . . . 

**Yet, injurious as this all was to the evolution of 
science, there was developed something in many 
respects more destructive ; and this was the influence 
of mystic theology, penetrating, permeating, vitiating, 
sterilizing nearly every branch of science for hundreds 
of years. . . . 

** In chemistry we have the same theologic ten- 
dency to magic, and, as a result, a muddle of science 
and theology, which from one point of view seems 
blasphemous and from another idiotic, but which, 
none the less, sterilized physical investigation for ages. 
The greatest theologians contributed to the welter of 



522 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

unreason from which this pseudo-science was de- 
veloped. . . . 

** Strong investigators, like Arnold of Villanova, 
Raymond Lully, Basil Valentine, Paracelsus, and their 
compeers, were thus drawn far out of the only paths 
which led to fruitful truths." White furthermore 
speaks of several instances where Paracelsus showed 
his independence of judgment. For example, he 
wrote to Zuinglius against the prevailing belief that 
comets were balls of fire '* flung from the right hand 
of an angry God to warn the grovelling dwellers of 
earth." He also ** called attention to the reverbera- 
tion of cannon as explaining the rolling of thunder, but 
he was confronted by one of his greatest contempo- 
raries. Jean Bodin . . . declared thunder to be * a 
flaming exhalation set in motion by evil spirits, and 
hurled downward with a great crash and a horrible 
smell of sulphur.' " Of his service to medicine White 
says : '*In the sixteenth century Paracelsus appears — 
a great genius, doing much to develop medicine be- 
yond the reach of sacred and scholastic tradition, 
though still fettered by many superstitions." Again, 
" In the beginning of the sixteenth century, cases of 
* possession ' on a large scale began to be brought 
within the scope of medical research, and the man 
who led in this evolution of medical science was Para- 
celsus, He it was who first bade modern Europe 
think for a moment upon the idea that these diseases 
are inflicted neither by saints nor demons, and that 
the 'dancing possession' is simply a form of disease, 
of which the cure may be effected by. proper remedies 
and regimen." 

By what methods has Browning reproduced the 
atmosphere of the time in the poem ? 



GERMAN NATIONAL LIFE 



S^i 



Whence had the learnmg of Paracelsus's time been 
derived ? (See Draper, especially Chap. XIII.) Is 
this also suggested in the poem ? 

What was the attitude of the real Paracelsus toward 
Luther ? 

Do these three poems each show different effects of 
the Renaissance as it passed into Germany ? 

** Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha " is so purely 
imaginary that it cannot be definitely compared with 
any historical period. Nevertheless, does it not seem 
to breathe the atmosphere of all the old polvphonic 
writers who flourished in Germany in the fifteenth, 
sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries ? 

The name of Palestrina is the one definite clew in 
the poem. What w^as his place in musical develop- 
ment ? (See Symonds's ** Itahan Renaissance.") 

Is there anything in " Abt Vogler " that reflects 
either a phase of musical or philosophical development 
in Germany ? What place did Vogler hold in Ger- 
man music ? 

Does the aspiration of the poem well symbolize the 
dawn of the romantic period in German music which 
was being inaugurated b)^ Beethoven during Vogler' s 
life ? Would it be possible to imagine a greater con- 
trast than that between his inspired extemporizing and 
the complicated manufacture of the fugue by Hugues ? 
So, may these poems be said to symbolize the begin- 
ning of German music in the polyphonic school and 
its climax in the romantic school ? 

Though these poems thus stand for . phases in 
musical growth in Germany, is their chief interest in 
their abstracdy musical and moral significance } 

In this whole group of poems is the interest more 
individual and less national than it is in many, if not 
all, of the Italian group ? 



524 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Two other poems might be included under Ger- 
many, though not under the present topic : First, 
*'The Flight of the Duchess." Although there is 
nothing to indicate the exact scene where the poem is 
laid, can you gather from the references in the poem 
that the scene is Germany, and that it is near the sea ? 
It might be somewhere in the Saxony provinces, as 
there they have copper and salt. 

From the fact that this German Duke brought his 
ideas for imitating chivalry from Paris, what French 
king might have been upon the throne } 

How are the habits of the Gypsies reflected in this 
poem ? (See Borrow' s ** Gypsies in Spain," also 
article on Gypsies in Encyclop/^dia Britan?iica.^ 

The second one is ** Colombe's Birthday,' ' which 
in its names is suggestive of France. 

How do these French names come to belong to 
German Duchies ? 

The incidents in this play have only the faintest 
resemblance to the history of the succession to Juliers, 
but is there not some of the atmosphere of the time in 
the fact of Berthold's succession being assured by Pope 
and Emperor instead of its being decided upon its 
merits, as Berthold himself hints (see Act V. line lo)? 
Also in the wrongs that the city of Cleves suffered t 

With these poems, as with the others, the aspects 
of historical hfe in them are entirely subordinate to the 
character interest ; yet do they serve as an illustration 
of the fact that Browning varies the settings in which 
he puts his characters as much as he does their individ- 
uality, and makes them reflect more or less definitely 
historical epochs ? 



Portrayals of National Life : 
Spanish 

Topic for Papery Classzvork, or Private Study. — 
Pictures of Life in Spain. 



" Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister " .... 

' ' The Confessional " 

" A Forgiveness " ( middle eighteenth century r) . 
" How it Strikes a Contemporary "( seventeenth 

century?) .o., v 3 282 



Vol. Text Note 

16 365 

21 366 

227 303 



For further study of the three last poems, see pro- 
grammes "Phases of Romantic Love," *' Husbands 
and Wives," and '< The Poet;" for all, see, also. 
Introductions and Notes in Camberwell Brozv?tingy as 
cited. 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — *' In 
Spain," Buckle maintains (** History of Civilization," 
Vol. I., p. 177), "the Church has, from a very 
early period, possessed more authority, and the clergy 
have been more influential than in any other country." 

The long struggle of Spain against the Arab inva- 
sions, being both political and religious, identified the 
Church with the national life. "During eight cen- 
turies," says Buckle again, *' this compact between 
Church and State was a necessity forced upon the 
Spaniards by the peculiarities of their position ; and 
after the necessity had subsided, it naturally happened 



526 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

that the association of ideas survived the original 
danger, and that an impression had been made upon 
the popular mind which it was hardly possible to 
efface." (See Chapter I. on *' Outlines of the His- 
tory of the Spanish Intellect," in Vol. II., cited 
above.) 

How do the first two poems of this group illustrate, 
as peculiarly Spanish, the influence of monastic life ? 

Part of the instinctive hatred felt by the monk who 
is watching good Brother Lawrence in the ** Solilo- 
quy," and describing him as he waters his ** damned 
flower-pots," trims his bushes, and picks his melons, 
may have found well-nigh justification for abhorrence 
of such a fellow in Spanish prejudice against any skil- 
ful industry because the " Moriscoes " and ** infidels " 
were good at the same sort of tasks. Does the ** Bar- 
bary Corsair " allusion (line 3 i ) reveal another Spanish 
prejudice ? 

Is imputing the Arian heresy to him, in stanza v., 
a token of a deep-seated historical Spanish aversion ? 

** After the subversion of the Roman Empire, the 
first leading fact in the history of Spain is the settle- 
ment of the Visigoths, and the establishment of their 
opinions. . . . They, as well as the Suevi, who imme- 
diately preceded them, were Arians, and Spain, during 
a hundred and fifty years, became the rallying point 
of that famous heresy. . . . Clovis . . . regarded 
by the Church as the champion of the faith, attacked 
the unbelieving Visigoths. His successors, moved by 
the same motives, pursued the same policy ... a war 
for national independence became a war for national 
religion . . . late in the sixth century, the Latin 
clergy converted their Visigothic masters, and the 
Spanish government, becoming orthodox, naturally 



SPANISH NATIONAL LIFE 527 

conferred upon its teachers an authority equal to that 
wielded by the Arian hierarchy." 

Why is it that the humor of the poem seems to 
reach its climax of deliciousness in the desire to curse 
Brother Lawrence into Manicheeism (see Camberwell 
Browning, Vol. IV., note 56, p. 366, for information 
as to this Oriental heresy) through himself making a 
cheating compact with Satan ? 

Does the conjuration he begins (line 70) suggest 
Arabic words ? How do they contrast with the inter- 
ruption of the call to vesper service, and the Latin 
** Hail Mary " following ? 

Does the humorousness of this cloister picture 
detract at all from the force of the situation as a moral 
comment of an implicit sort on the evils of monastic 
life .? 

'* There are," says Miss West (** Browning 
Studies," p. 125), **some of Browning's pictures of 
evil that explain themselves to us better if accepted as 
mere studies of this or that attitude of feeling rather 
than as portraits of character. To seek in these for 
any traces of good in evil would be not to the point. 
An instance of this is the highly-finished study of one 
phase of human hatred — the hatred felt not for any 
definite injury done, but on account of the groundless 
antipathy (of which probably most people have had 
some slight experience), intensified by the compulsory 
comradeship in the oppressive monotony of the con- 
ventual life. I refer of course to the Soliloquy of that 
Spanish monk who is shown to us as looking on, with 
a hideous snarl of ' g-r-r-r ' at the inoffensive garden- 
ing operations of the obnoxious * Brother Lawrence,' 
whose melon-flowers of the * fruit-sort ' he had been 
at the trouble to keep * close-nipped on the sly.' 



528 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

**Here we have simply a study of a morbid mental 
condition, resulting from the unhealthy inactivity of 
the cloister routine ; and as to what the real nature of 
this very unamiable monk would have been had his 
energies found legitimate scope in the outer world. 
Browning does not, of course, undertake to say. 
Probably, since his cloistered feelings were anything 
but languid, even in the midst of the sluggishly-peace- 
ful influences surrounding him, there may have been 
in him a good deal of force of character, which he 
might have turned to better account under luckier 
circumstances." 

Do you get a clear picture of Brother Lawrence's 
innocent obtuseness, however, and to the point of 
half sympathy with the other brother's view of his 
provokingness ? 

Are there any indications of date either in this or 
the following poem ? 

Is the name of the girl's lover, ** Beltran," signifi- 
cant of Gypsy or Moorish blood ? Does the poem 
leave the expulsion of the Moriscoes suggestively in 
its background ? 

What confirmation of the united interest and action 
of Church and State, such as this poem of ** The 
Confessional" exemplifies, is afforded by Spanish 
history ? 

What types of priest are represented in these two 
and in the following poem ? 

Is the cruel refinement of the husband of ** A 
Forgiveness" typical of a Spanish nature polished but 
not changed by culture ? 

Is the power of the Church in Spain characteris- 
tically exhibited in ** The Confessional," or were 
such instances rare ? 



SPANISH NATIONAL LIFE 529 

How does the picture there presented of priestly 
power so exerted agree with the picture in ''A 
Forgiveness " of another confession, where the man 
who is confessing dares to stab his Father Confessor ? 

Is this probable under the circumstances, for a man 
of so much brain, power, and rank as the husband in 
that poem is represented as having ? 

In what period in the history of Spain are such a 
character and such an incident of power against a priest 
likeliest to have appeared ? 

Does the time of the poem belong to the period of 
foreign influence, expulsion of the Jesuits, and attacks 
on the Inquisition peculiar to the reign of Charles III. ? 
Or may it be ascribed better to the nineteenth-cen- 
tury attempts at nadonal regeneration ? 

The mere existence of a modern yet probably not 
contemporaneous statesman of so much ability as the 
man in ** A Forgiveness" is represented as having 
would make him, according to Buckle, almost impos- 
sible either during the rule of the Austrian dynasty 
before the middle eighteenth century, or in the re- 
actionary period of Charles V., which followed. 

** Ensenada, the well-known minister of Ferdinand 
VI., was appalled by the darkness and apathy of the 
nation, which he tried, but tried in vain to remove. 
When he was at the head of affairs in the middle of 
the eighteenth century, he publicly declared that in 
Spain there was no professorship of public law, or of 
physics, or of anatomy, or of botany . . . there were no 
good maps of Spain, and ... no person who knew how 
to construct them. All the maps they had came from 
France and Holland. . . . The only remedy seemed to 
be foreign aid. . . . Even the fine arts, in which the 
Spaniards had formerly excelled, partook of the general 
34 



53© BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

degeneracy." (See Buckle, pp. 49 fol. for graphic 
evidence of the decline of Spain after the expulsion 
of the Moriscoes in 1609, and the influence of the 
Church in prostrating intellect and energy.) '* Books 
unless they were books of devotion were deemed 
utterly useless. . . . Until the eighteenth century Ma- 
drid did not possess a single public library. ... So 
late as the year 1771, the University of Salamanca 
pubhcly refused to allow the discoveries of Newton to 
be taught, and assigned as a reason that the system of 
Newton was not so consonant with revealed religion as 
the system of Aristotle." 

What Hkelihood is there of the Spanish dramatic poet 
painted in ** How it Strikes a Contemporary " belong- 
ing to the early period of Spain's literary glory, and 
that Cervantes, Shakespeare's contemporary, is hinted 
at? 

What evidence is there even then of the national 
characteristics of the average Spaniard, and how is it 
shown in the talk of the young ValladoHd dandy about 
this eccentric man, the Corregidor } Are piety and 
lack of intellectual curiosity and alertness, despite 
much goodness of nature and a lovable gayety, indicated 
in the speaker in this poem ? 

Is the saintly death-scene of the Corregidor in 
accord with the history of Cervantes ? He became 
a monk a few years before his death. (See Ticknor's 
** History of Spanish Literature.") 



Portrayals of National Life : 

Russian 

Topic for Paper i Classwork, or Private Study. — 
A Russian Folk-Story. 

Page 
Vol. Text Note 
' * Ivan Ivanovitch " xi 128 304 

Compare the little descriptive picture of Russia in " Pauline," 
lines 950-954. 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — Who 
tells the story ? Since it is told by a Russian as an 
example of a Russian carpenter's characteristic habits, 
and as a tale told to Russian children, time out of 
mind, for the sake of the moral, ought it to be 
expected that it embodies the same sort of moral 
edification for a modern public, and that the poet's 
view of the situation is meant to appear in Ivan's act ? 
Or should it not rather be regarded as a typical folk- 
tale displaying, along with Russian life and ways of 
thought, a primitive rather than an absolute moral ? 

Is Mr. Walker somewhat blinded to the integral 
artistic and historic aspects of the poem when he con- 
siders that the whole piece was devised by Browning 
for the sake of the moral judgment to which the story 
leads and of the act in which it was expressed, and 
**not for the sake of the miserable woman who died 
by it, nor for the ghastly tale itself" ? ('* The 



532 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Greater Victorian Poets," p. 159.) Is this too 
much like taking the story as little Russian children 
are expected to take it, and being so led away 
by the realism of the poem that the poem itself is 
ignored ? 

Is what is said about the tale as one belonging to 
Russian hearts as they were in Peter's time, before 
French and German ideals of life had modified Slav 
instincts, significant ? What is the bearing of this on 
the final situation ? 

But in adding ** I wager 't is as old to you as the story 
of Adam and Eve," does the poet make the speaker 
intimate that it is based on fundamental ways of 
looking at life, elementary views of the relations of 
men and women doubtless embodied for the poet in 
the stories of many another race ? 

Is it significant, also, that the name of the story 
related in this poem, as known to the Russian, is not 
*' Ivan Ivanovitch," but *' The Judgment of God " ? 
Does the re-titling by Browning have the effect of 
putting the judgment where it properly belongs, upon 
the dramatic figure of the carpenter,, and upon him as 
a representative, also, of Russian public opinion ? 
For it is to be considered that this name is an epitome 
of Russian character, as much as *'John Bull " is of 
English or ** Brother Jonathan " of American charac- 
ter. (See note 35, p. 305, Camberwell Browningy 
as cited.) 

Is this poem rightly called a dramatic idyl ? Why 1 
What does the word *' idyl " mean ? 

Are the pictorial presentations of the group watch- 
ing Ivan ply his axe in the cold morning air, the horse 
and sledge stumbling into the market-place, the bring- 
ing to life of the half-frozen woman, etc., any more 



RUSSIAN NATIONAL LIFE 533 

or any less successful in their way than the talk of 
Ivan and the group, and the dramatic narrative told 
them by the resuscitated Louscha. 

Is Louscha a better talker than the rest are, that her 
story is so much more vivid ? Or is this realism of 
hers due to the poet ? But is he not justified in making 
her tell her story with effectiveness, since she has an ex- 
perience to relate which must have cut to the quick, 
and which she instinctively feels must be told vividly 
if she is to account successfully for her own course 
in returning alone ? 

Is it to be understood that Louscha tells the story a 
little to her advantage, but that behind her words (lines 
I 35—149) is indication of a frightful choice really being 
made between the pair of ** twin-pigeons " ? Did she 
assist the wolves' choice of Stiopka, the ** undersized 
slip ' ' ? And how about Terentii when his turn comes ? 
What is meant by ** No fear, this time, your mother 
flings . . . Flings ? I flung ? Never ! but think ! 
— a woman, after all?" Is this inadvertent con- 
fession ? Or is it merely acknowledgment of mental 
hesitation ? And, after this, is the representation she 
makes of herself as falling as she ** ought" quite 
on the babe she guards, and are her questions, " Move 
hence?" ** Could I do more?" as convincing as 
she would have them ? 

And yet all through her anguished, nervous story is 
it not obvious that she knows her life as a woman will 
seem of very little consequence to that group of bearded 
peasants, and that she is only hoping desperately for a 
little pity, 'a little mercy from the one most affectionate 
to her personally ? 

Are her last words upon life and its sweetness (lines 
239—248) a self-accusation which challenges her sen- 



534 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

tence, as Mrs. Orr says ? Although they do imply a 
sense of her weakness, and, instead of helping her, call 
down upon her the most inflexible judgment, the most 
summary punishment, do these last words of hers make 
a piteous appeal to Ivan's strength and affection to save 
her, as one who is weak and selfish indeed, and yet 
used to affection and indulgence, and not unnaturally 
life-loving ? 

Is there any reason to suppose, for example, that so 
far as Martin Relph's failure to be heroic is concerned 
in the face of the sudden need that tested him (see that 
poem, Camberwell Brozvning, Vol. IV., p. 107 ; also 
Introduction, pp. xiv-xvii), he was as guilty as Lou- 
scha was ? Is she judged with less indulgence for her 
weakness and cowardice because of the sterner sense 
of the heroic in Ivan as a man of primitive mould ; 
because she failed repeatedly to take the strong, self- 
sacrificing course ; or because she was a mother ? 

Could it be urged that Ivan was right from his 
point of view, and yet that from a less rudimentary 
point of view of Society at large no one man has 
a right to judge and award to another immediate 
capital punishment ? 

Is Ivan more defensible for his judgment from both 
points of view — his time and personality, as the poet 
reveals them, being considered — than the present- 
day critic who would commend the justice of such a 
punishment in such a case ? 

Is it likely that the poet so commended it ? Is it 
likelier that he might discriminate between act and 
man and appreciate Ivan to the full, while he both 
pitied Louscha and despised her course, entering into 
each point of view with sympathy ? Is the poem 
itself sufficient proof of this relative point of view ? 



RUSSIAN NATIONAL LIFE 535 

Does the poet say a word except through the mouths 
of the characters and of the Russian who tells the story ? 
Does this story-teller give his point of view except in 
the general way, already referred to, at the opening of 
his tale in his talk with the poet ? 

Jn giving the speeches showing the two ways in 
which the two judges look upon Ivan's deed, does the 
lord represent the more modern view, the priest the 
traditional view ? What do you think of their argu- 
ments ? Is Louscha finally condemned by priest and 
people not as an individual but as a mother, and Ivan's 
act therefore adjudged as just on this score ? 

If Ivan had been found skulking behind the Sacred 
Pictures, as the lord surmised, would this have been 
a presumption that he had done what he considered a 
doubtful deed ? As he was not, may it be assumed 
that he was justified in his own conscience ? 

Is the essential test, at bottom of the ethical question 
here involved, not social but personal, — whether Ivan 
and Louscha felt themselves to be guilty ? Ivan clears 
himself by this test ; does Louscha ? 

Is this personal application of their acts the only cer- 
tain moral touchstone the poem suggests ? 

*' One character w^e do find . . . which cannot 
•be made to fit in with his creed of universal hope — 
the mother of * Ivan Ivanovitch.' She is perhaps 
Browning's solitary unredeemable human being," 
writes Miss West, in paper before cited. ** There 
is discernible in her no soul which could be cleansed 
from guilt by any purgatorial process, — no passion 
which might be transmuted from force of evil to force 
of good. To such a creature Ivan's axe brings simple 
annihilation ; nothing of her survives to be consigned 
to future reclaiming discipline. Her fault had not been 



536 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

moral, had not been sin, to be punished by pain in- 
flicted on the soul ; it was merely the uncounteracted 
primary instinct of self-preservation, and as such it is 
fitliest dealt with by the simple depriving her, without 
farther penalty, of the very life which she had secured 
for herself at so horrible a cost. It is not as if any 
mother-instinct in her had striven with the self-pre- 
serving instinct, and had been overborne by it in a 
moment of frenzied fear. No ; no revulsion of im- 
pulse occurs when she arrives alone at the village ; no 
wish that she had been sacrificed for her children, or 
that she had shared their fate. In the complacent 
sense of peace and satisfaction with which she views 
her own sole and single safety, what hope is there of 
any regeneration for her, by any conceivable process ? 
The impression left with us at the last is, that this thing 
in the semblance of woman is a bit of creation lower 
in the scale of existence than the brutes, and has no 
lot or part in the destiny of humanity. We are satis- 
fied to think that the headless body and severed head 
are all that remain of Louscha when the strong- 
armed carpenter has dealt his righteous blow. And 
we feel that the dramatist is content thus to leave her." 

Do you agree with this ? Is Loiascha worse than 
Guido, and the man in ** The Inn Album," and does 
the poem so show her ? 

Are the poet's picturesque glimpses of the survivals 
of communal life and customs among the Russians in 
accordance with the records ? Compare with Step- 
niak's *' Communal Life in Russia." 

Does Ivan Ivanovitch give evidence of any failure in 
power, on the part of the poet of sixty -seven, to ima- 
gine and portray concretely and picturesquely an inci- 
dent and a scene peculiar to a crude populace ? 



Portrayals of National Life : 
Jewish 

Topic for Papery Classworky or Private Study. — 
Jewish Life and Legend. 

Page 

Vol. Text Note 

**Saul" (Tenth century B. c. ) iv 66 375 

"Rabbi Ben Ezra " (twelfth century) . . . v 175 310 

*' Holy-Cross Day " (early seventeenth century) iv 257 395 

*' Filippo Baldinucci " (late seventeenth century) ix 250 306 
Rabbinical Legends : — 

*' Ben Karshook's Wisdom " xii 270 380 

"Jochanan Hakkadosh " xi 254 330 

" Moses the Meek " xi 284 337 

" Solomon and Balkis " xi 236 325 

"Doctor " xi 213 321 

For special treatment of the first two poems, the pro- 
gramme on the ** Evolution of Religion" should be 
consulted, and " Phases of Romantic Love " for 
** Solomon and Balkis." See, also, Camberwell 
Browfiingy Introductions and Notes, as here cited. 

Queries for Investigation and Discusssion. — Brown- 
ing's Jewish poems fall into two groups, one based on 
historic life, and one on Rabbinical tradition having, it 
may be, an element of actual life, but, in general, a 
larger admixture of the unreal and fanciful. 

** Saul," already specially considered in a foregoing 
programme, is widely separated from the other poems 



538 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

of the historic group, not only in time, bat in conditions 
historic and national, for it celebrates a vital moment 
in the early history of the ruling dynasty of the prosper- 
ous Jewish kingdom, when its first two kings met 
together, and the promise of a climax of Jewish 
spiritual influence over the world was made by the 
poet the subject of young David's song. 

How much at odds this spiritual importance of the 
Jew in the Gentile world came to be with the integrity 
of Jewish material prosperity, as a nationality, is the 
fact underlying the remaining poems of this group. 
Although in ** Rabbi Ben Ezra," also, the main interest 
is rather religious and philosophical than historical 
(and it is, therefore, more fully treated under the sub- 
ject of the ** Evolution of Religion "), the historic 
associations of the dispersion of the Jews over the 
Christian world come out necessarily, in the personaUty 
of Ibn Ezra, the Spanish Rabbi of the twelfth century, 
who is the mouthpiece of this poem, and who in 
'* Holy-Cross Day " is mouthpiece, also, of the pro- 
test of his persecuted race against those who maintained 
Christ in word and defied Him in deed. Do both 
"Saul " and " Rabbi Ben Ezra " deepen in meaning 
when they are linked together and with the later 
Jewish poems depicting the contumely and outrage the 
jews suffered from the followers of the gentle Jew of 
Nazareth .? 

Viewed in relation with the history of his race in 
its initiation of Christianity and its persecution by 
Christendom, does the religious philosophy expressed 
in *' Rabbi Ben Ezra" suit the trials and the develop- 
ment through pain and loss of the Jews, as a race, 
in fulfilment of some higher spiritual purpose of God 
in which the thinker may have faith, as well as it 



JEWISH NATIONAL LIFE 539 

suits that to which it is more obviously applied, — the 
trials and the growing old of the individual ? 

May not the Jewish race rejoice, for example, in 
being allied to that which provides rather than that 
which partakes, which has effected and not received, 
holding nearer of the ** God who gives than of His 
tribes that take ' ' ? Might it not be the hope of the 
devout Jew, to-day, who, in the light of the religious 
evolution of mankind, regarded the contribution his 
race had rendered to the idea' of God, that the 
resplendent and happy youth and unfortunate obstacle- 
beset old age of his scattered nation had been alike 
useful in moulding the cup for the Master's lips, — a 
use justifying all pains of the process ? What other 
correspondences do you find in the historical appli- 
cations of the poem to the race ? 

It has been urged that the poet was wrong in mak- 
ing David approach, in ** Saul," an idea so abhorrent to 
Hebraic monotheism as the Incarnation. But although 
it is evident enough that the Messianic idea was con- 
ceived in the shape of ** Power," as Browning would 
put it, by Jewish minds in general, is not the historic 
fact indisputable that in the shape of " Love " it found 
exemplification, for the world in general, in the person 
of a Jew, and that this existence and doctrine, owed 
thus to che Jewish race, must have had roots in its 
past ? Could it not be rationally accounted for, more- 
over, as an idea, at whatever time any nature, aware 
that it loves more compassionately than the God it 
adores, would come to attribute no less power of loving 
but more to the Creator than the creature, and thence 
to attribute to Him an effective stooping to the human 
to save and help ? Is not this the way Browning 
makes it come to David in the ardor of feeling for Saul, 



540 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

and in the inspirational mood of his improvisation as 
poet ? Do you find this convincing as a mode of 
showing the historic evolution of the idea ? 

It has been claimed by modern Jews, on the other 
hand, that the desire of Rabbi Ben Ezra (lines 61-72), 
that flesh might some day help soul as much as soul 
helps flesh, is thoroughly Hebraic. Is it not an idea 
closely related in spirit to the idea of the divine in- 
dwelling in the body, and the body responding to the 
finer needs of that indwelling divinity ? Is the 
abhorrent idea of the Incarnation very distant from, 
this admittedly Jewish desire ? 

It is Ben Ezra's " Song of Death," which the Jews, 
who are supposed to be sitting in silent meditation over 
the sermon they have heard, repeat under their breath, 
in " Holy-Cross Day." Does this expression of the 
relation of the Jews to the creed which the life of 
their Christian persecutors contradicts agree with the 
historic ofEce of the Hebrew to the Gentile idea of 
God ? Is it the same philosophy of the use of evil to 
educe higher spiritual value, ** machinery just meant " 
to give the "soul its bent," applied here to their 
nation's watch and ward, till Christ really come, 
which finds expression in the earlier poem ? 

Does the contrast between the mockery and guying 
of the outrageously gruff realistic first part of "Holy- 
Cross Day" and the exalted lyrical strain of the 
*'^Song of Death " mar the unity of the poem, or is it 
essentially appropriate, and therefore merely an effective 
change of mood, introducing the theme in a new light ? 

How are the smoothness and solemnity of the verse 
which are as characteristic of the last as the explosive- 
ness and roughness are of the first of the poem effected 
without changing the four-stressed line ? 



JEWISH NATIONAL LIFE 541 

What is meant by the hand *' which gutted my 
purse would throttle my creed"? 

A passage in Coryat's ** Crudities " relates that the 
** maine impediment " to the conversion of the Jews 
living in Italy is that **all their goods are confiscated 
as soon as they embrace Christianity. . . . Because 
whereas many of them does raise their fortune by usury 
... it is therefore decreed by the Pope and other 
free Princes . . . that they shall make a restitution of 
their ill-gotten goods, and so disclogge their soules and 
consciences when they are admitted by holy baptism 
into the bosom of Christ's Church." 

Was Ibn Ezra historically and actually one who 
was capable of enunciating such a view of Judaism 
as the Song of Death expresses, and such a philosophy 
of the spiritual uses of misfortunes and physical or 
external ills of all sorts as the poem *' Rabbi Ben 
Ezra " illuminates ? 

As to the Jew in Spain, Dr. Draper quotes the 
Spanish writer Cabanis as saying, *< * They were our 
factors and bankers before we knew how to read ; 
they were also our first physicians.' To this it may 
be added," continues Draper, *' that they were, for 
centuries together, the only men in Europe who saw 
the course of human affairs from the most general 
point of view. . . . These men were infusing strong 
common sense into the literature of western Europe 
in ages of concealment and mystification." A pres- 
entation of the joint Jewish, Arabic, and Hellenic 
influence upon the foundation of colleges, upon 
the initiation of critical and scientific thought, is also 
given by Draper. (See " Intellectual Development of 
Europe," pp. 413 foil.) Of Ben Ezra he speaks as 
a **Jew of Toledo who was one of a distinguished line 



542 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

of learned Spanish Hebrews, and who was at once 
a physician, philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, 
critic, poet." (See also Camberzvell Browningy Notes, 
and for persecution as well as status of the Jew in early 
European history, article '* Israel " in Encyclopaedia 
Britannicay Milman's ** History of the Jews," and 
especially Gr^tz's *' History of the Jews.") 

Is Browning's treatment of Jewish persecution and 
Christian prejudice in " Filippo Baldinucci," markedly 
characterized by an evolutionary view of the his- 
toric conflict between Jew and Christian ? And does 
this exemplification of the insensible yet decided 
growth of tolerance towards the Jew — from the time 
of Uncle Filippo, who tells the story, to that of his 
little boy nephew who has to be told that the Jews 
must not be pelted — an indication of the design to 
show historic development in all. these poems ? Do 
you find it significant of Browning's point of view 
that the final part of this poem is one he has imagined, 
and carries out in this direction the historic develop- 
ment of religious sectarian prejudice ? 

Is the weakening of the childlike faith belonging 
to early Christianity, which Baldinucci mourns as ex- 
hibited in the decline of zeal against the Jews, 
accompanied by a more truly religious spirit ? Is 
there some truth in Baldinucci' s claim that it denotes 
latitudinarianism and scepticism ? Or is a certain 
amount of scepticism good, separating the spirit and 
the letter of Christian doctrine, the essential from the 
non-essential, and so liberating a view of all sects as 
embodying partial truth, and encouraging an attitude 
of mind toward all mankind which is more thoroughly 
religious ? 

Is the poet right in intimating in this poem that 



JEWISH NATIONAL LIFE 543 

this liberalizing tendency of civilization has modified 
Jewish as well as Christian religious literalism ? 

Is the implication the poem suggests, that Art has 
been an important factor in bringing about this mutual 
toleration, justified by facts ? 

Why have the Jews, whose accomplishments in 
learning, science, music, and poesy have been notable, 
comparatively so little signalized the genius of their 
race in painting and sculpture ? 

The Cardinal's reply to the Jew who finds it hard 
to see why the Christians prize Pagan pictures of 
Jupiter, is that since they are all lies they are indif- 
ferent matters as religious expressions, but that their 
drawing and coloring are truth. And the Jew, there- 
fore, adopts the same reasoning in regard to pictures 
of the Madonna. Is this impiety of even-handed 
application of the Christian view of Pagan art to 
Christian art as well all that the poem suggests } Is 
the poet right in making Baldinucci see nothing more 
in it .? But does it not suggest, to the modern reader, 
the poet's point of view, of which Baldinucci never 
dreamed although he brings it out indirectly; namely, 
that Pagan, Christian, and Jewish modes of religious 
thought are reconcilable through the fundamental 
spiritual meaning they may all manifest, if viewed 
with relation to the historic development of the human 
mind ? 

Professor Barnet, in " Browning's Jews and Shake- 
speare's Jew" (** Browning Studies," London Brown- 
ing Society, p. 265), points out still another side to 
this explanation of Christian admiration of Pagan art, 
** besides the sinister one suggested by the Cardinal, 
and that is, that to the greatest spirits of the Renais- 
sance the traditions of Greek and Roman and Hebrew 



544 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

were all true in a peculiar sense and all at the same 
time^ To the Italians the Pagan world was direct 
ancestor, and they were only in part de-Paganized by 
Christianity. See, in "The Ring and the Book" (Book 
XI., lines 1 9 10—2001), what Browning makes Guido 
say. As Professor Barnet continues, '^ They half beheved 
in their Ledas and Ganymedes and Jupiters ; the lives 
lived around them, if not their own, showed it. But 
they also believed in Christ and Calvary, and there- 
fore they were not averse to painting themselves and 
their contemporaries at the foot of the Cross. Now 
the Jews could never see things in this light. They 
were obstinate, undoubtedly, and they had never 
allowed their definite convictions and traditions to be 
sapped by imaginative art. Their interpretation of 
tradition, therefore, was not artistic ; it was literal. . . . 
Moses and Aaron and David were all the more real 
because the Jews had never seen differing representa- 
tions of them in art. They had all the realness of 
abstraction. There is nothing like Art for destroying 
religions that depend on this or that attitude towards 
historical facts. Hell cannot be believed in after it 
has been painted. It is outside the regions of * fact ' 
that religions are strong." 

But if the fine arts in addressing themselves pri- 
marily to external presentation of facts to the eye, are 
an element in the criticism of religious ideas, there is 
another art, of poetry, which the Jews did profess, 
which has a tendency to restore the balance from 
material scepticism to spiritual belief, and which does 
tend toward an artistic instead of a literal interpreta- 
tion of tradition. Does this explain the • spiritual 
interpretation of Judaism as reconcilable with Chris- 
tianity in essence, which the poet David implicitly. 



JEWISH NATIONAL LIFE 545 

and the philosopher poet Rabbi Ben Ezra explicitly, 
have been construed by Browning to give in ** Saul " 
and the ** Song of Death " ? 

Mr. Andrew D. White reminds the reader, in his 
'* History of the Warfare of Science with Theology " 
(p. 300), that it was ** the rabbis of Palestine and 
the Hellenized Jews of Alexandria" who began **the 
vast theological structure of oracular interpretation 
applied to the Bible." The disporting of the mind, 
whether dry, formal, or fanciful to absurdity, or pun- 
gent and human, is not lacking in interest to a poet 
who is interested in all phases of historic development, 
and the representation among Browning's Jewish 
^poems of such a range of comment, anecdote, and 
tradition as the Rabbis recorded in the Talmud, is 
evidence of how synthetic his imaginative glance at 
national characteristics was. 

In "Ben Karshook's Wisdom " a glimpse is given 
of the ironical insight of a typical Rabbi. Beside the 
wit of the aphorisms attributed to Karshook, does the 
little poem convey a notion of the Rabbi's personality ? 
Does the eye that ** shoots fire " somehow impart the 
fact that he saw through the questioner and was indig- 
nant at him as a thoroughly materialistic self-loving 
member of the congregation, who while desirous of 
saving himself was anxious not to relinquish any 
sooner than need be his delights in Egypt's flesh- 
pots ? So again, with the second questioner, does 
the Rabbi's "sneer" suggest that his query was seen 
to be a result of a dilettante scepticism which was 
really more doubtful of others having souls than that 
the inquirer himself lacked one ? 

"Moses the Meek" is an example of the out- 
rageously fabulizing temper of some of the Rabbinical 
35 



546 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

legends. Since this one is an invention, and likely to 
have no precise counterpart in these legends, is it too 
grotesque and useless a bit of fanciful fun for the poet 
to have indulged in ? Or is it, as an exemplar of 
that kind of thing in Jewish traditional comment, of 
value enough, in its way, to occupy the marginal 
position, as it were, which is given it here in con- 
nection with the legendary element in **Jochanan 
Hakkadosh"? 

What is the secret of life according to Jochanan's 
last experience ? Justifiable only in part he finds it, 
and therefore always disappointing when viewed sec- 
tionally from the standpoint of lover, warrior, states- 
man, and poet. When viewed as a whole whose 
parts are interlinked and related and mutually neces- 
sary to each other with all their qualities of relative 
good and bad, there is suddenly a sense that there is 
nothing wrong anywhere. The knowledge that good 
marred with evil in every partial experience is better 
in the total scheme, because there more potential for 
larger future good than the sheer good alone which he 
has been discontentedly desiring in each field of human 
effort and finding impossible, now overpowers him 
with dehght, and makes him recognize the ecstasy to 
be enjoyed from Hfe's gift of consciousness, which 
enables him to follow and take part in the evolution 
of the spiritual usefulness of all life's processes. 

Is this closely in agreement with Rabbi Ben Ezra's 
view of the good of life when we have faith to see it 
whole ? 

Is Tsaddik's idea of the holy man's secret coming 
from the abandonment of the flesh and the attainment 
of a purely spiritual consciousness while still in life ironi- 
cally meant to be shown as utterly on the wrong tack ? 



JEWISH NATIONAL LIFE 547 

Is it precisely the reconciliation of flesh with spirit, of 
all sectionalism and division with unity that constitutes 
the vision of Hfe's secret which floods his last moments 
in the flesh with rapture ? 

Is this opposed to the Oriental or Transcendental 
view of the absolute, and of the unity underlying and 
embracing human life ? Is it a further phase of that 
philosophy, because the relative and the individual are 
just as necessary as the absolute and universal, in fact 
are the means requisite to their realization more and 
more by each soul for itself? 

Browning meant to reveal in this poem, it is said 
(see Notes, Carjiberzvell Browni7ig, as cited), the essen- 
tially Jewish philosophy of life to correspond with the 
essentially Christian philosophy expressed by St. John 
in "The Death in the Desert." In what does the 
difference consist ? In an especially sensuous instead 
of an especially idealistic way of regarding human 
development ? And does the agreement consist in the 
revelation in both of a progressive unity in life, — all 
phases of experience on the sensuous side of life being 
regarded by Jochanan Hakkadosh as all phases of 
belief are regarded by St. John on the idealistic side, 
as a continuously enlightening process ? 

"Solomon and Balkis " and ** Doctor ," two 

sportive renderings of Rabbinical legends, the second 
the nearest to the wholly farcical (possibly ** Ned 
Bratts " excepted) to which the poet ever came, 
represent the many anecdotes on the relations of men 
and women scattered through the Talmudic writings. 

Are these characteristic of the Jewish mind also ? 
Is a distrust of women and a disdain of relationship 
with them shown frequently in the Talmudic and 
other Jewish writings along with an almost inconsis- 



548 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

tent recognition of feminine power, and an almost 
superstitious dread of the relationship as of fundamental 
power over men ? 

The ideal quality in the Greek variant of the 
Alkestis story, ** The Just One " (referred to in Notes 

on ** Doctor " in Camberwell Brozvning), brings 

out the strongly sensuous quality, and the bias against 
women which belongs characteristically to the Jewish 
way of telling a kindred story. Are the less flattering 
presentations of the Jewish cast of mind, here intimated 
on the side affecting women, inconsistent with the 
presentation of the typically Jewish nature in the 
other poems ? 

Is there a taint, if not of Oriental impurity, at least 
of Oriental contempt of women, in the average or 
traditional Jewish attitude ? Or does Browning's 
picture of the Hebrew lack counterbalancing anecdotes 
that might have illustrated a more equal and spiritual 
relationship ? 



Portrayals of National Life : 
Roman 

Topic for Paper y Classwork, or Private Study. — 
Incidents of Roman Life. 

Page 

Vol. Text Note 

" * Imperante Augusto natus est — ' " . . . xii 247 375 

<*Protus" iv 263 396 

** Instans Tyranntis " iv 154 384 

" Pan and Luna " xi 222 322 

See Cambertvell Broivning, as cited. 

Queries for hivestigation and Discussio??. — Is the 
point of this poem, so vividly picturing the terrifying 
good fortune of the Emperor Augustus, the contrast 
of the material dominance of Imperialism with that 
subtler power of the spirit, typified in the birth of 
Christ ? Is such subtler power always bound to 
supersede the coarser power ? 

Is the effect of the nameless fear of his own dizzy 
height above the world, shown by Augustus, enhanced 
in the poem, by its being reflected through the terror 
it strikes in one of his subjects ? 

How is the incident of the Emperor's fear of his 
own predominance introduced by the Senator who 
tells the story of his meeting the Emperor disguised as 
a beggar ? Can the poet be convicted of leaving any- 
thing of historical importance out that would add to 
the intellectual as well as the material aggrandizement 



550 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

of Caesar ? Yet has he compressed all such mention 
easily and naturally into the talk ? How do the 
records of Augustus's career corroborate all that is 
here brought out ? (See Notes, Camberwell Brozv?i- 
ing ; Mommsen's "History of Rome.") 

Is this monologue — flashing the daily life of Impe- 
rial Rome upon the eye, and shrivelling the sense with 
the sudden force and significance of the contrast be- 
tween human power and assurance, and craven human 
dread cowering before it knows not what — a striking 
proof of the continuity of poetic gift in the poet of 
seventy-seven, and one that gainsays the common say- 
ing that his later work nowhere shows the objective 
faculty that marked the early monologues ? 

Is it like the early monologues, which present 
typical or historical figures, in style of verse as well 
as in synthetic condensation and in picturesqueness ? 

Are the relations of the Latin poets to their patrons 
implied in the mention here of Varus and Horace true 
to the ** Golden Age " of Augustus ? 

The military necessities of Imperialism and the 
vicissitudes they brought in their train are portrayed in 
** Protus." None of Browning's readers have as yet 
been able to find its prototype in the history of the 
Byzantine Empire ; can you ? 

Yet is it none the less essentially true to history, 
if merely a poetic invention ? 

Is the presentation of the contrast between Protus, 
the Prince Imperial, and the rough usurper, John the 
Pannonian, as derived from looking at two busts, in 
itself characteristically Roman, capturing the fancy with 
the reminder of the long rows of emperors' busts 
"we count by scores" which have come to be asso- 
ciated in every mind with the antique customa-^-y 



ROMAN NATIONAL LIFE 551 

honors paid to dynasties of Roman rulers ? Does 
their number also suggest the possibility of unknown 
spaces of history where these two busts might easily 
have remained unremarked till the poet's eye singled 
them out and investigated their annals ? 

** The first and last lines, describing two imaginary 
busts," says Mr, Symons, **are a fine instance of 
Browning's power of translating sense into sound. 
Compare the smooth and sweet melody of the opening 
lines — 

* One loves a baby-face with violets there — 
Violets instead of laurels in the hair, — 
As they were all the little locks could bear : ' 

with the rasping vigor and strength of sound which 
point the contrast of the conclusion : — 

* Here 's John the Smith's rough-hammered head. Great eye, 
Gross jaw and griped lips do what granite can 
To give you the Crown-grasper. What a man ! ' " 

** Instans Tyrannus " is, probably, not only linked 
with the foregoing Roman poems by the fact that it is 
based on the suggestion of a line or two from the 
Augustan poet, Horace, which is its obvious connec- 
tion with the Latin Empire, but also because it exem- 
plifies the sort of tyranny that often could have been 
asserted under Roman rule, even if it is not peculiar 
to the days of Imperial Rome. Is its moral point in 
close accord with that of the first poem of this group ? 

Would the circumstances described as belonging to 
the tyrant and to the man agree with any other rela- 
tionship than one between an emperor and an insig- 
nificant subject ? Who else but an Emperor or 
national ruler of supreme power would have, as this 
tyrant has, a million or two subjects, the wealth and 



552 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

seductions to corrupt the soul he hated, the power to 
injure him through his family or friends, if he had 
any such ; to suppress him utterly at last ? 

Is it eternally true as an exemphlication of any 
national or individual authority exercised to oppress 
a man or a nation against right and justice, if the 
oppressed make an appeal to the higher authority of 
right and justice ? 

Does it imply that the triumph of the higher author- 
ity over the tyrant necessarily prevents the material 
evil to the man ? And if this were what is meant, 
would it be true ? Or does it claim, not that the 
triumph of right is always maintained on the material 
basis, but that on the spiritual plane of life it holds, — 
the man who appeals to justice is not corrupted by the 
oppression from which he suffers, and the tyrant is 
himself morally shaken, and so convicted of the exist- 
ence of a power mightier than his own ? 

** Pan and Luna " illustrates the Roman mythology, 
arising not from its own original conception of cosmic 
life, but on that of the greater nation it conquered, and 
whose ideas made a conquest of Rome, — Greece. 

How much has the poet changed the myth, in 
atmosphere and spiritual meaning, from the way Virgil 
put it originally ? 



Page 




Text 


Note 


6 


282 


247 


328 


64 


319 


117 


301 


166 


3" 



Portrayals of National Life : 
Greek 

I. Topic for Paper y dasszcork, or Private Study. — 
Greek Myths and Legends as Developed by Browning. 

Vol, 

'* Artemis Prologizes " v 

'* Ixion " X 

*' Apollo and the Fates " xi 

' ' Pheidippides " x 

■•^Echetlos" x 

Hints on these poems may be found in the Notes to 
the Ca7?iberzvell Brow?ii?ig, as given above, and in the 
Introduction to Vol. VIII. ; also programme ** Poems 
of Heroism and Adventure." 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — What 
is the story of Hippolutos as told in the play by Eurip- 
ides ? (See Vol. I. of the translation from Eurip- 
ides in Bohn's ** Classical Library.") How much of 
the play has Browning woven into the poem .? Where 
may the incidents of the revival of Hippolutos and his 
love for one of the nymphs of Artemis be found ? 
(See other sources of the myth in Virgil, the ^neid. 
Book VII.; Ovid, "Metamorphoses," 15; Ovid, 
** Fasti," 6 ; also the play of Seneca on Hippolutos.) 

This beautiful fragment is only the prologue of what 
was intended to be a play. Were such prologues char- 
acteristic of the plays of Euripides ? 



554 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Is this prologue of Browning's, however, richer than 
those of Euripides in its presentation of the personality 
of the speaker, through the weaving into her talk of 
references to her own habits and the customs which 
are observed in regard to her ? He makes her combine 
the quahties of Hecate with those of Diana. How 
does he do this ? (For information on the flowers 
sacred to the gods and customs observed in their wor- 
ship, see Friends' s *' Flowers and Flower-lore ; " 
Robinson's <* Greek Antiquities.") 

Is Asclepios described anywhere in Greek literature 
as effecting his cures by such practical methods as 
Browning makes him use ? (See the Iliad, Book V., 
for description of Peon's healing of the wounded Mars. 
Paeon is the physician of the Iliad.) 

Does Browning follow the classical representations 
of ^Esculapius ? In classical portraiture he is repre- 
sented with a large beard, holding in his hand a staff 
round which was wreathed a serpent ; his other hand 
was supported on the head of a serpent. Does the 
style in this poem seem to remind one of the large 
calmness of a Greek statue ? 

In ** Ixion " the poet uses a Greek myth, and intro- 
duces into it a large symbolical interpretation such as it 
could not have had in the first place. This poem has 
been said to be intended principally as an argument 
against eternal punishment, and the endurance of Ixion 
has been compared with that of Prometheus. Do the 
points noted in the remarks following show that such 
an interpretation does not account for all the implica- 
tions in the poem } ** But why, it might very well be 
asked, did Browning, if he intended to make another 
Prometheus, choose Ixion for his theme.? And the 
answer is evident, because in the story of Ixion he 



GREEK NATIONAL LIFE 555 

found some quality different from any which existed 
in the story of Prometheus, and which was especially 
suited to the end he had in view. 

** The kernel of the myth of Prometheus as developed 
by ^schylus is proud, unflinching suffering of punish- 
ment, inflicted, not by a god justly angry for sin against 
himself, but by a god sternly mindful of his owm pre- 
rogatives, whose only right is might, and jealous of any 
interference in behalf of the race w^hich he detested, — 
the race of man. Thus Prometheus stands out as a 
hero in Greek mythology, a mediator between man 
and the blind anger of a god of unconditional power ; 
and Prometheus, with an equally blind belief in fate, 
accepts while he defies the punishment inflicted by 
Zeus. He tacitly acknowledges the right of Zeus to 
punish him, since he confesses his deeds to be sins, but 
nevertheless, he would 'do exactly the same thing over 
again. 

' By my choice, my choice 
I freely sinned — I will confess my sin — 
And helping mortals found mine own despair.' 

** On the other hand, Ixion never appears in classic 
lore as a hero. He has been called the * Cain ' of 
Greece, because he was the first, as Pindar says, 
* to introduce to mortal men the murder of kin not 
unaccompanied by cunning.' Zeus appears, how- 
ever, to have shown more leniency to him for the 
crime of killing his father-in-law than he ever did to 
Prometheus, as he not only purified him from the mur- 
der, but invited him to a seat among the gods. But 
to quote Pindar again, * he found his prosperity too 
great to bear, when with infatuate mind he became 
enamoured of Hera. . . . Thus his conceit drave 
him to an act of enormous follv, but the man soon 



556 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

suiFered his deserts and received an exquisite torture.' 
Ixion, then, in direct contrast to Prometheus, stands 
forth an embodiment of the most detestable of sins, 
perpetrated simply for personal ends. To depict such 
a man as this in an attitude of defiance, and yet to jus- 
tify his defiance, is a far more difficult problem than to 
justify the already admired heroism of Prometheus." 
(See Editorial article in Poet-lore^ Vol. V., p. 626, 
December, 1893.) 

The first point Ixion makes in his defence is that 
sin is an aberration of sense ; that it comes through 
the ignorance of the soul whose *' rush upon the 
real " is clogged by sense. Does this thought have 
any parallel in Greek thought ? 

In Plato's Dialogues there are many hints to the 
effect that virtue results from knowledge. For exam- 
ple, in the ** Protagoras " Socrates says: **Then, I 
said, if the pleasant is the good, nobody does any- 
thing under the idea or conviction that some other 
thing would be better and is also attainable, when he 
might do the better. And this inferiority of a man to 
himself is merely ignorance, as the superiority of a 
man to himself is wisdom . . . and is not ignorance 
the having a false opinion and being deceived about 
important matters ? . . . 

" Then, I said, no man voluntarily pursues evil, or 
that which he thinks to be evil." 

But in the parable of the den in the seventh book 
of the ** Republic " this idea is presented very clearly. 
(See Jowett's translation of the '' Dialogues of Plato," 
Vol. II.) The abstract of the parable as given by 
Jowett is as follows ; — 

** Imagine human beings living in a sort of under- 
ground den, which has a mouth wide open towards 



GREEK NATIONAL LIFE 



557 



the light, and behind them a breastwork such as 
marionette players might use for a screen ; and there 
is a way beyond the breastwork along which passen- 
gers are moving, holding in their hands various works 
of art, and among them images of men and animals, 
wood and stone, and some of the passers are talking 
and others silent. . . . They are ourselves, and they see 
nothing but the shadows which the fire throws on the 
wall of the cave ; to these they give names, and if we 
add an echo which returns from the wall, the voices 
of the passengers will seem to proceed from the 
shadows. Suppose now that you suddenly turn them 
round and make them look with pain and grief to 
themselves at the real images ; will they believe them 
to be real ? Will not their eyes be dazzled, and will 
they not try to get away from the fire to something 
which they can behold without blinking .? And sup- 
pose further, that they are dragged up a steep and 
rugged ascent into the presence of the sun himself, will 
not their eyes be darkened with the excess of light ? 
Some time will pass before they get the habit of per- 
ceiving at all ; and at first they will be able to per- 
ceive only shadows and reflections in the water ; then 
they will recognize the moon and the stars and will at 
length behold the sun in his own proper place as he 
is. Last of all they will conclude : this is he who 
gives us the year and the seasons, and is the author of 
all that we see. How will they rejoice in passing 
from the darkness to light ! How worthless to them 
will seem the honors and glories of the den out of 
which they came." 

The remarks of Socrates in interpreting the allegory 
are especially pertinent to Ixion*s contention. ** The 
prison is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the 



558 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

sun, the ascent and vision of the things above you may 
truly regard as the upward progress of the soul into the 
intellectual world. . . . 

" But if this is true, then certain professors of 
education must be mistaken in saying that they 
can put a knowledge into the soul which was not 
there before, like giving eyes to the blind. . . . 
Whereas our argument shows that the power is 
already in the soul ; and that as the eye cannot 
turn from darkness to light without the whole body, 
so too, when the eye of the soul is turned round, the 
whole soul must be turned from the world of gen- 
eration into that of being, and become able to endure 
the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of 
being — that is to say, of the good," illustrating further 
with the attitude of a clever rogue, ** But what if 
there had been a circumcision of such natures in the 
days of their youth ; and they had been severed from 
the leaden weights, as I may call them, with which 
they are born into this world, which hang on to sen- 
sual pleasures, such as those of eating and drinking, 
and drag them down and turn the vision of their souls 
about the things which are below — if, I say, they had 
been released from them and turned round to the 
truth, the very same faculty in these very same persons 
would have seen the other as keenly as they now see 
that on which their eye is fixed." 

Is the idea that Zeus is responsible for evil to be 
found in Plato, or does he insist that God is the author 
of good only ? 

Is Ixion right when he contends that, knowledge of 
the good being gained, to keep on punishing the 
wrongdoer serves no purpose but that of hate ? 

Ixion presents what he considers would be a better 



GREEK NATIONAL LIFE 559 

way to treat sinners. Does this mean that his con- 
ception of God is higher than his belief about God ? 

Now, as to the nature of the sin. Browning makes 
it distinctly to be arrogance, following the Latin ver- 
sion of the myth. In Lucian's dialogue between 
Hera and Zeus, the stress is laid upon the arrogance 
of Ixion. Jupiter declares that Ixion shall pay the 
*' penalty not of his love — for that surely is not so 
dreadful a crime — but of his loud boasting." 

Does the poet mean to imply by emphasizing this 
point that Ixion' s sin was his attempt, in becoming 
the friend of Zeus and the lover of Hera, to ape 
divine power and love, and through the failure which 
attended him symbolized in his being hurled into Hell 
— that is through realizing that he could not be more 
than suffering, struggling man, he also realized that 
Zeus was only man's conception of God ? (See lines 
91-92.) 

But though Zeus is thus dethroned, is all lost ? 
Through the struggles and the sufferings and the 
bafflements of the flesh a rainbow of hope is formed 
by means of which he descries far beyond Zeus a 
reality of ineffable purity toward which he will ever 
strive. 

At that point in the poem where Ixion realizes 
that his conception of God is higher than his belief 
about God, and therefore the God he has worshipped 
has been only a figment of the imagination, he be- 
comes a nineteenth-century philosopher, who per- 
ceives that though the basis of any particular religious 
doctrine be swept away, the eternal essence of religion 
still remains, and toward the absolute Good man must 
always strive while recognizing, as Ixion in his arro- 
gance did not, that man cannot know the whole nature 



560 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

of God. Does this change from Greek thought to 
modern thought spoil the artistic unity of the poem ? 

Upon this point Mr. Nettleship remarks: **By a 
transition wholly unaccounted for by the artistic basis 
of the poem, the king Ixion proceeds to express ideas 
such as could not possibly enter the mind of a man 
believing in the fact, however unjust, of man's being 
punished by Gods whose notions of right and wrong 
could only be formulated by the word tyranny. In 
fact, Ixion on his v/heel, after the process as stated 
above, proceeds to prophesy. He retains the image 
of the wheel with its rainbow, and states his case in 
effect thus : * I am now suffering the eternal pains which 
my God Zeus has unjustly awarded me for an act of 
mere folly : and therefore I say that Zeus is not a real 
God, only a hollow phantasm created by man's imagi- 
nation and which must one day fall and vanish.' 
That of course is a reductio ad absurdum as coming 
from a man who believes himself to be actually suffer- 
ing eternal torment of his body made immortal for the 
purpose of torment as an unjust punishment inflicted 
on him by a God who he believed was real enough 
when actually dooming him." Would this incon- 
sistency vanish if the whole poem is taken as a symbol 
of the development of the human race through the 
different phases of religious conceptions ? 

This poem has a curious rhythm which suggests 
the turning of the wheel. The lines have six stresses, 
and every second line has two stressed syllables to- 
gether in the middle of the line. Is the effect of the 
wheel added to by the fact that the poem is not 
divided by stanzas and has very {qsn periods ? 

In "Apollo and the Fates" Browning imagines the 
scene which took place between them when Apollo 



GREEK NATIONAL LIFE 561 

asked the extension of the life of Admetus, but it is to 
be observed that he has made this scene symboHze a 
philosophy which belongs to the nineteenth century. 
What is that philosophy as interpreted in the Notes 
to the Camberwell Browfiing? 

Is there anything to justify Browning's making the 
Bacchus cult stand for the birth of love and aspiration 
in mankind ? *' The root idea in the Bacchus myth 
seems to have been stirred by a sense of the poten- 
tiality of life in jthe teeming earth, thence by the 
divinity of Zeus was the fiery fluid attar distilled to 
become a joyous god stinging his votaries to a delirium 
of delight. Mr. Walter Pater makes a similar ex- 
planation. It was the lightning of Heaven upon the 
dew, liberating a liquid joy and persuading to a divine 
ecstasy." (See Editorial, Poet-lore ^ Vol. IX., p. 455. 
An idea of the worship of Bacchus may be gained 
from *' The Bacchae," by Euripides, Bohn's Edition, 
Vol. I.) 

This poem has sometimes been objected to as being 
incoherent and unpleasant on account of the incident 
of Apollo's making the Fates drunk. 

Might it be answered to these objections, first, 
that the incident is founded upon an actual myth, and 
second, that the poem has a sort of concentrated 
strength and savage largeness which suits well with the 
idea of nature personifications as understood by primi- 
tive mankind, and which is still visible enough in the 
culture- mythology of Greece and may be seen in the 
«* Bacchas " of Euripides, therefore all unpleasantness 
connected with the intoxication of the Fates is removed 
if we regard it as a symbol representing the awakening 
of blind law through feeling? 

The rhythm in this poem as m the last one is very 



562 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

interesting. Thie normal line has four beats. How is 
the placing of the short syllables varied ? Do these 
variations, together with the concentration of style, give 
the poem its rugged, almost uncouth effect ? 

In ** Pheidippides " and **Echetlos" we have 
legends of the battle of Marathon. As the stories 
may be found in Herodotus, we may make a direct 
comparison with the Greek source. How much and 
in what ways has the poet enlarged upon the accounts 
given in Herodotus ? Does Herodotus give any hint 
that the Spartans did not wish to help the Athenians, 
and made their superstition about the moon an excuse ? 

Upon this point Smith says in his *' History of 
Greece " : ** As soon as the news of the fall of Ere- 
tria reached Athens, the courier Pheidippides was sent 
to Sparta to solicit assistance. Such was his extraor- 
dinary speed of foot, that he performed this journey 
of one hundred and fifty miles in forty-eight hours. 
The Spartans promised their aid ; but their supersti- 
tion rendered their promise ineffectual, since it wanted 
a few days to the full moon, and it was contrary to 
their religious customs to commence a march during 
this interval. The reason given by the Spartans for 
their delay does not appear to have been a pretext ; 
and this instance is only one among many of that 
blind attachment to ancient forms which characterize 
this people throughout the whole period of their 
history." 

In treating Sparta's action the way he has, did 
the poet gain a point which could be used to great 
artistic effect in the poem ? 

Is it well to take such liberties with history for the 
sake of art ? Might it be argued that although the 
Spartans were sincere in the reasons they gave, a fiery 



GREEK NATIONAL LIFE 563 

youth who had run one hundred and forty miles and 
who knew the extent of the danger and whose reli- 
gion was different, might suspect their sincerity, and so 
Browning represented Pheidippides's opinion ? 

Looking back over this group of poems founded on 
Greek subjects, we see that each one treats the subject- 
matter somewhat differently. In ** Artemis Prolo- 
gizes ' ' the myth is taken just as it stands from classical 
sources, but the relation of it is put into the mouth of 
the goddess, and what enlargement there is is in the 
portrayal of the goddess's personality ; but this en- 
largement is confined strictly within classical limits. 
In **Ixion" also, the letter of the myth is adhered 
to, but Ixion is developed into a philosopher com- 
bining both Greek and modern elements, and thus he 
becomes a type of humanity. In ** Apollo and the 
Fates" out of a mere hint is developed a whole 
dramatic scene along lines which make of it an alle- 
gory of the workings of the universal forces of life. 
In *' Pheidippides " the legend serves as litde more 
than the background for the development of the 
characters of Pheidippides and Pan, while in *' Echet- 
los " there is nothing but the simple relation of the 
story, with a Httle local color added and a moral at 
the end, in the style of the morals attached to fables. 
Owing to these various treatments do we get, in some 
of these poems, pictures of Greek ideals, and in others 
the relations of Greek ideals to modern ideals ? 

II. Topic for Paper, Classworky or Private Study. 
— Greek Literary Life. 

Page 
Vol. Text Note 

<' Balaustion's Adventure" viii i 285 

"Aristophanes' Apology" .... = . viii 90 299 



564 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

For special studies of these poems, see the Introduc- 
tion and Notes to Camberwell Brow?wig, as given 
above. 

Queries for hivestigation and Discussio?i. — From 
the introductory lines of this poem to line 357, what 
is to be learned of the present scene, of the adventure 
Balaustion has had, of her own personality, of the state 
of opinion in Athens and outside of Athens in regard 
to Euripides ? How much of this is based upon his- 
tory, and how much of it is due to the imagination of 
the poet ? (See Notes to Cambei-well Brozvning. An 
excellent account of the life and work of Euripides may 
be found in G. Murray's *' Ancient Greek Literature." 
See also Jebb's ** Classical Greek Poetry;" Perry's 
** History of Greek Literature.") 

Does Balaustion have a premonition of what modern 
acting is when she uses the expressions referring to the 
way the actors looked when they spoke and so horrified 
the whipper-snapper critic of the day, who could not 
of course imagihe acting without a mask ? (See lines 
304-316.) 

Is her explanation of the relation of the arts being so 
close that one always brings up another a true one .? 
Might this depend upon the imaginative power of the 
recipient of the artistic impression as well as upon the 
artist's power of representing things vividly ? 

The setting of the subject thus being presented, the 
main business of the poem begins, which is a transla- 
tion of the ** Alkestis " of Euripides, with apprecia- 
tive and interpretative comment by Balaustion. The 
translation may be compared with the literal translation 
given in the Bohn Edition of Euripides, and also with 
Arthur S. Way's in '* Euripides in English Verse." 

Do Balaustion' s descriptions of the action of the play 



GREEK NATIONAL LIFE 565 

add materially to the vividness with which it comes be- 
fore the reader, so that he feels himself actually in the 
place of an ancient Greek looking at the play ? 

Does it seem to you that Death did not heed what 
Apollo said, and that Apollo w^as prophesying to him- 
self rather than addressing Death, as Balaustion says ? 

Is Balaustion's conclusion that Alkestis now saw 
everything in its right relation, and was no longer 
deceived by the protestations of Admetos justified by 
the fact that she now no longer addressed any remarks 
to her husband, but spoke to her children ? 

Does Balaustion make a good criticism w^hen she says 
Admetos ** muttered now^ this, now that ineptitude "? 

Does the speech Alkestis afterwards addresses to 
Admetos show still more clearly that she is not very 
much impressed with the nobleness of her husband, 
or his realization of the greatness of the sacrifice she is 
making ? 

Does Balaustion penetrate to the weakness of Adme- 
tos's nature in the criticism following his protestations 
that he will not marry again ? 

Do you agree with Balaustion that Admetos began 
to realize the full significance of what had happened as 
soon as his wife was dead ? 

Does Balaustion succeed in representing the fine 
dramatic effect of the entrance of Herakles with all his 
outside health and freshness upon this scene of woe, all 
the more dismal because of its revelation of the selfish- 
ness of Admetos ? 

Do you think that Balaustion in her appreciation of 
Herakles has really penetrated the purpose of Euripides 
in portraying him as he did ? 

Is she right in supposing that Herakles was not told 
of the death of Alkestis because thev all felt ashamed to 



566 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

tell him the story of their own selfishness, or was it a 
point of honor with the Greeks that a guest should be 
entertained without regard to private sorrows ? Hos- 
pitality was one of the cherished ideals of Greece. But, 
in this instance, might not Euripides have meant to give 
just the impression which Balaustion gets, for he was 
largely a revolter against Greek religious and social 
ideals ? Besides, is it not shown, later on in the play, 
that Herakles was astonished that he had not been told ? 
Furthermore, whether Balaustion really took the mean- 
ing of Euripides or not, is it not an interesting and 
perfecdy possible interpretation of the action of Ad- 
metos and the household when Herakles appeared ? 

Is Alkestis right again when she says Admetos saw in 
his father a reflection of himself, and so hated him all 
the more for his refusal to die for his son ? 

Did the friends interpose, as Balaustion thinks, be- 
cause they realized ** love's champion here had left an 
undefended point or two the antagonist might profit 
by"? 

Are her comparisons between the characters of the 
two men as they appear in this painful wrangle just ? 

Do you feel, as Balaustion did, that Admetos was 
beginning to see his own action in a less selfish light 
when his father left ? 

Does Balaustion make a good defence of Herakles 
against the criticism of the old servant with whom 
Charope seemed to sympathize ? 

Is it also a penetrating observation of hers that 
when Admetos begins to realize the truth he grows 
like his wife and speaks quietly instead of wailing 
about his misfortune ? 

In the version proposed by Balaustion, does she hit 
upon the only way in which it would be possible for 



GREEK NATIONAL LIFE 567 

Alkestis to make the sacrifice, and not only preserve the 
honor of her husband but show him to be as unselfish 
and noble as she ? 

Does the version proposed by Balaustion- strike you 
as being an especially appropriate one for a young girl 
to have invented ; and if so, why ? (See Introduction 
to Camberwell BrowJimg, Vol. VIII., for remarks 
upon this subject.) 

Does this exquisitely pure and ideal version of the 
story agree with the fact of her valiant defence of 
Herakles in his cups ? (For remarks upon this, see 
also Introduction.) 

Professor R. G. Moulton, in a paper before the 
London Browning Society, criticised the interpretation 
of the "Alkestis " made by Balaustion in this poem, 
as a "Beautiful Misrepresentation of the Original," 
His arguments briefly are that ** Admetos is not to be 
considered as an individual, but rather as the repre- 
sentative of the state, and, as such, was the dispenser 
of the glorious hospitality which was a religion with 
the Greeks ; and that since the Greek ideal demanded 
the sacrifice of the individual to the state, it never 
entered the head of Admetos or of any one else that he 
should not be saved at any cost. He concludes there- 
fore that not only Admetos is not selfish, but, on the 
contrary, he is as eminent for unselfishness in his 
sphere of life as Alkestis proves in her own. He 
says : — 

"If Admetos is in fact selfish, how comes it that no 
personage in the whole pla^^ catches this idea? — no 
one, that is, except Pheres, whose words go for 
nothing, since he never discovers this selfishness of 
Admetos until he is impelled to fasten on another the 
accusation which has been hurled at himself Except 



568 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Pheres, all regard Admetos as the sublime type of 
generosity. Apollo, as representing the gods, uses the 
unexpected word * holy ' to describe the demeanour 
with which his mortal protector cherished him during 
the trouble that drove him to earth in human shape. 
The Chorus, who, it is well known, represent in a 
Greek play public opinion, and are a channel by 
which* the author insinuates the lesson of the story, at 
one point of the action cannot restrain their admira- 
tion, and devote an ode to the lofty character of their 
king. And Herakles, so grandly represented by 
Browning himself as the unselfish toiler for others, 
feels at one moment that he has been outdone in 
generosity by Admetos. There can be no question, 
then, what Euripides thought about the character of 
Admetos. And will the objector seriously contend 
that Euripides has, without intending it, presented a 
character which must in fact be pronounced selfish ? 
The suggestion that the poet who created Alkestis did 
not know selfishness when he saw it, seems to me an 
improbability far greater than the improbability that 
Browning and the English readers should go wrong." 
Why should the positive opinion of Pheres that 
Admetos was selfish be dismissed as of no account 
while the silence of the chorus should be taken as an 
indication that Euripides did not consider Admetos 
selfish .? Again, if Admetos stands for the glory of the 
state, how does it happen that no hint of this is given 
in the play ? And if hospitality was such an under- 
stood duty, why did the old servant grow so indignant 
at the entertaining of Herakles, and why did Herakles 
consider that Admetos had done such a praiseworthy 
thing in hiding his grief from him and entertaining 
him .'' 



GREEK NATIONAL LIFE 569 

Commenting on Professor Moulton's view, an 
Editorial in Poet-lore (Vol. III., p. 41) says : ** Such 
an ideal certainly argues not merely unselfishness but 
altruism on the part of the individual, but what does 
it argue on the part of the state or the representative 
of the state ? Surely, not only selfishness but pure 
egoism. That few people, even in Greek times, had 
reached this altruistic height is shown by the fact that, 
of all the friends and relatives of Admetos, his wife 
alone was willing to make the sacrifice. From the 
remarks of the chorus and Admetos we should con- 
clude that, like most of the Greeks, they thought the 
practical working of the ideal should be relegated to 
the old men and women. It is easy to believe in self- 
sacrifice for the glory of the state when some one else 
is to make it. But, naturally, the one upon whom 
this duty is thrust, being of the same selfish nature as 
the other members of the state, objects to performing 
it, and retaliates, as Pheres does, by tracing back the 
selfishness to its true fountain-head, in the state, other- 
wise Admetos, who, according to Professor Moulton, 
equals the state. And so Alkestis becomes the sole 
representative of the altruistic side of the Greek ideal, 
while Admetos, whether considered as individual or 
as state, represents the egoistic side, and Pheres grasps 
more nearly the balance between the two, akin to our 
modern notions. To plead for Admetos on the ground 
that he represented the state is merely to shift the 
ground of the inquiry, for, in either case, the true 
ground of inquiry is * Was he conscious of a higher 
ideal than that of the subordination of the individual 
to the state, or did he, in ignorance of a higher ideal, 
fiilfil the best that was in him ? ' " 

Balaustion makes his consciousness gradually awaken 



570 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

to the fact that Alkestis is happier in making the 
sacrifice than he is in retaining his life, and so he 
realizes the selfishness he had shown in the first place ? 
Does the play seem to you to fit this interpretation or 
not ? 

There is one thing to be remembered : the story 
was fixed when Euripides took it for his subject, so 
that the events must remain as they are. Then it de- 
pended upon the poet to develop the characters 
according to his own ideals. 

Dr. Philip S. Moxom makes a good argument against 
Professor Moulton's view in a paper in the published 
volume of " Boston Browning Society Papers" (also 
in Poet-lore y Vol. VIII., pp. 425-432), the conclu- 
sions of which are that ** Alkestis dies for Admetos, not 
as the head of the state, but as her husband and the 
father and natural protector of her children, rather than 
live, a widow, without him, or form a new union. It 
is not even for love of Admetos that she dies ; for 
while she shows a high sense of wifely duty, there is 
no trace of any passionate fondness for her weak and 
selfish husband . . . she recognizes her doom as the 
decree of the Fates, and accepts it; yet, in accepting 
it, protests her freedom to have chosen otherwise." 

Professor Moulton finally sums up his position as 
follows : — 

** And this brings me to what I consider the real 
motive of the play, the conception which underlies the 
whole, and welds the separate parts into a unity. 
Euripides is the great anticipator of the modern world 
in the world of antiquity ; he catches the ideals of the 
ages to come without losing the ideals of his own 
times. In this play he is painting a conflict, not between 
two characters — the selfish Admetos and the devoted 



GREEK NATIONAL LIFE 571 

Alcestis — but between two ideals: the ancient ideal 
of public splendour, and the modern ideal of domestic 
love. An apprentice in the art of poetry could strike 
the rough contrast between the devoted wife and the 
gross husband ; the great master is attracted by a more 
subde problem — to make each party worthy of the 
other, and let the contest be between the different sides 
of life represented by each. Euripides is following 
here his favourite bent : he is taking a thread of 
modern realism, and insinuating it into the midst of 
the tragic grandeur which is the natural field of his art. 
At the opening of the play we see nothing but the 
sacred splendour of life which is embodied in the 
Apollo of the prologue, and which has been saved to 
the world, though by the sad sacrifice of Alcestis. 
The queen herself is an ardent votary of the cause for 
which she is to die, and treats the day of her fate as a 
festal occasion. But there comes a point when this 
unbroken dignity of mien begins to give way under 
the pressure of the human feeling suppressed. The 
human feeling spreads froiji Alcestis to the servant who 
tells the tale, and she catches the doubt whether their 
lord will not have lost as much as he has gained by the 
vicarious death. The cloud of doubt spreads to the 
Chorus ; Admetos is possessed by it ; the prominence 
of the human feeling in contrast with the safety of 
the cause is for ever growing ; the scene with Pheres, 
however unjust to the character of Admetos, assists the 
story by throwing the two sides of the situation into 
sharp conflict ; until, in the final speech of Admetos, 
the cloud of domestic sorrow has blotted out all the 
splendour of sacred hospitality, and love is supreme. 
Then comes the deliverance, and the discord is har- 
monised in the glimpse of earthly love and sacred 



572 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

splendour once more united, while behind towers the 
genial god-man who has worked it all. The play 
finds its unity, not in the selfishness of Admetos and 
his repentance, but in the ideal of family affection 
gradually enthroning itself side by side with the 
grandeur of public life." 

In these remarks does he not partially stultify his 
own ground of criticism and suggest an interpretation 
in harmony, if not identical, with that of Balaustion .? 

Dr. Moxom seemed to feel this, for he says, ** In 
his later statement, as to a conflict between two ideals 
constituting the * real motive of the play,' there is some 
truth, but it entirely defeats his contention that Brown- 
ing has misrepresented Euripides." He goes on to 
say, '* May not * the real motive of the play ' have 
been deeper still ? May not Euripides, not denying, 
but implicitly recognizing the common ideals both of 
devotion to the State and of hospitality, really have 
sought to set forth the very thought which Browning 
has so finely developed, namely, the contrast between 
the selfishness of Admetos and the self-sacrifice of 
Alkestis, and the regeneration of Admetos' s character 
by the discipline of the tragic experience through 
which he passed, leading him to self-knowledge, 
repentance, and the attainment of a nobler spirit ? " 

In the opening of*' Aristophanes' Apology," what 
historical incident does Balaustion dwell upon in her 
talk with her husband ? What effect has it had upon 
their actions and upon Balaustion' s spirits ? What is 
the mood which leads her to tell of her second 
adventure with Aristophanes .? How much of an 
idea do you get of the literary life of Athens and the 
relations between Aristophanes and Euripides before 
she tells actually of her adventure ? How does 



GREEK NATIONAL LIFE 573 

Euthukles appear ? Does it seem inartistic for Ba- 
laustion to recite to Euthukles the part he had taken in 
defending Euripides ? Is this accounted for by the 
fact that Balaustion says, " I somehow speak to unseen 
auditors. Not yoUy but — Euthukles had entered," 
etc. ? (Line 242.) 

Is her description of the entrance of Aristophanes 
upon their peaceful privacy both graphic and sarcastic, 
so that the keynote of her attitude toward Aristophanes 
is struck ? Is it quite evident that in spite of her dis- 
approval of Aristophanes his personality makes upon 
her an impression of his power ? Do we see the 
exalted personality of Balaustion through the effect her 
mere presence has, first on Aristophanes, then on the 
chorus ? Does his change of mood in the midst of his 
eulogy upon drink arise from his memory of the 
"something" that ** happened " .? (Line 741.) In 
welcoming him does Balaustion speak altogether sin- 
cerely, or does she rather address what she thinks he 
might be than what she thinks he really is ? 

In Aristophanes' reply to her welcome do we see 
glimpses of two or three characteristics of the man : 
in his admiration of Balaustion's manner rather than 
of her matter, indicating his susceptibility to beauty ; 
in what he would like to do with Comedy, showing 
his vanity ; in the fact that he does nothing, showing 
his lack of will toward any real reform ? Does Balaus- 
tion's question as to whether he has changed his 
methods of attacking vice imply a reprimand, or is she 
asking for information.? 

In giving his reasons why he wrote the plays which 
Euthukles did not like, what moods, showing his char- 
acter, does he pass through ? In objecting to the 
methods of Euripides, does he mingle a sneer at the 



574 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

man ? Does he also show that, besides being fond of 
his own coarser methods, he especially enjoys receiving 
the applause of the multitude ? Does he show that 
bis self-love is wounded when he is stigmatized as 
** wine-lees-poet " ? And that his success is not quite 
as complete as he would like, since laws are made 
against Comedy by the Archons, and the writers of 
Comedy are stinted in their allowance from the gov- 
ernment for the costumes of the chorus ? But is he 
specially aggrieved at the fact that Euripides takes no 
notice of the hits Aristophanes makes at him ? 

Does it appear that Aristophanes wrote the ** Grass- 
hoppers " in deference to those who found fault with 
him ? This play is lost, but does Browning make 
Aristophanes describe it in a manner that reflects his 
characteristics ? He declares that Ameipsias took the 
prize away from him. (This he did upon two occa- 
sions, but the plays were "The Clouds," which was 
beaten by the ** Connus " of Ameipsias, and ** The 
Birds," beaten by **The Revellers.") 

Does the account Aristophanes gives of the refur- 
bished ** Thesmophoriazousai " agree with the play as 
we have it ? It was acted twice in slightly different 
versions, which would justify the poet's giving a ver- 
sion different from the one extant. (See the Plays of 
Aristophanes, translated in Bohn Edition.) 

Has not Browning produced a fine dramatic effect 
in making Sophokles announce to Aristophanes and 
his revellers at the feast that he will mourn Euripides 
by having his chorus appear next month clothed in 
black and ungarlanded .? Plumptre, in his Biographical 
Notice of Sophokles, speaks of this tradition which, in 
spite of some uncertainty, is **too interesting and too 
honorable to be passed over." The news of the 



GREEK NATIONAL LIFE 575 

death of Euripides having come to Athens, ** Sophokles, 
then, in extreme old age, a few months before his 
death, was bringing out a tragedy. In honor of the 
memory of his great rival, in token of his forgetting 
all feelings of jealous emulation, if he had ever known 
them, he appeared on the stage at the head of a 
chorus, clad in mourning apparel, and without the 
wreaths which the members of a choral company 
usually wore on their entrance and laid on the altar." 

Is the scene following the appearance of Sophokles 
thoroughly natural in its portrayal of the gossiping, 
unkind remarks about Sophokles and Euripides ? Does 
the poet in this scene bring in very cleverly actual 
traditions in regard to Sophokles ? (See Notes, Cam- 
berwell Brozvtiingy lines 123 4- 1257.) 

Do the grounds upon which the youthful Strattis 
praises the "Good Genius" in Comedy reflect the 
opinions previously expressed by Aristophanes ? 

Is there anything in the attitude of Aristophanes 
toward Euripides upon which his sudden defence of 
him could be based ? Professor Murray calls attention 
to the fact that Aristophanes curiously enough imitates 
''Euripides to a noteworthy extent — so much so that 
Cratinus invented a word, * Euripid-aristophanize,' to 
describe the style of the two ; and, secondly, he must, 
to judge from his parodies, have read and re-read 
Euripides till he knew him practically by heart." 

Aristophanes attributes his own sentiment to his 
state of half-intoxication, but how do the company 
take it ? And how does the weakness of character 
shown by Aristophanes come out in the way he 
"repaired things," as he says? (Line 1465.) 

What effect does his discovery of the portrait, the 
musical instrument, and the manuscript of Euripides 



5/6 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

have on him, and how does Balaustion warn Aris- 
tophanes that she will suffer no desecration of the 
memory of her idol ? 

Does he reach the lowest depth of smallness and 
vindictiveness when he wishes the dead who have 
criticised him and at whom he has slung his shafts of 
ill humor, could see how things will be a few years 
hence when his greatness is proved ? And when he 
declares he had always taken care himself to pulverize 
the brood while they were alive, though this has its 
drawback, for those he blackens become immortal 
through his prowess ? 

Does Balaustion, in the sarcasm of her reply to this, 
show what an unreasonable stand Aristophanes takes 
against Euripides, since they are both working for the 
same reforms ? 

Does Aristophanes directly answer her objections 
to his methods of reform, or does he in the long pas- 
sage following (lines 176 1—2709), simply restate his 
position at greater length ? 

His first point is that Tragedy holds itself aloof 
from the world (i 764-1 770); his second, that 
Comedy is coeval with the birth of freedom. How 
does he proceed to show this? (Lines 1783-1838.) 
Does the sketch he gives of the rise of Comedy agree 
with the historical accounts of its rise ? (See Murray's 
*' Ancient Greek Literature," Chapter IX., "The 
Drama.") 

How does Aristophanes say he improved on this 
ancient comedy, and how is his description of his 
work borne out by his own plays } (See especially 
"The Knights" for Cleon, ** Acharnians " for 
Lamachos, **The Clouds" for Sokrates). 

In referring to the difficulties thrown in his way by 



GREEK NATIONAL LIFE 577 

the Archons, he describes a reformed comedy, such 
as he pretends Balaustion and Euthukles would like ? 
Does he in this description show himself incapable of 
appreciating a true reform ? Does the ** Plutos," 
which is Aristophanes' attempt at Middle Comedy, 
answer in any way this description ? (See Bohn's 
Edition.) 

The third point he makes is against the idealism of 
Euripides, in favor of his own realism. (Lines 1949— 
1974.) Was Euripides actually a realist, though of a 
different order from Aristophanes ? Arthur S. Way, 
in the Preface to Vol. II. of his translation of Euripi- 
des, thus sums up his characteristics : " More perhaps 
than any other ancient writer, he reveals to us the 
true inner Greek life, lays bare the secrets of its 
hearts. . . . The sad, earnest faces grow upon us, 
the hearts that strain beneath the burden of duty, the 
souls that weary over the problems of right and 
wrong, the voices that moan the unanswered question 
touching the mystery of suffering, the women who 
beat against the bars of convention and prescription, 
who wail for sympathy and plead for truth — these 
who were too mean for ^schylus' regard, too unideal 
for Sophocles, these of whom Socrates took no heed, 
to whom he left no legacy, to whose heart-hunger 
Plato offered the stones of his ideal city — to all such, 
Euripides stretched the brother hand of one who had 
also passed through deep waters, who had faced the 
spectres of the mind, who sighed with them that were 
desolate and oppressed, who came close to each be- 
reaved heart, sorrowing with stricken parents, and 
loving the little children." 

His next point is that Euripides has revolted against 
the ancient poetical traditions. Is this true of Euripides ? 
37 



578 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

From the consideration of the degeneration of 
Euripides, he passes on to bemoan the general degen- 
eration of the times at the hands of the philosophers. 
From the point of view of Aristophanes as an orthodox 
believer in the ancient Greek gods, was he justified 
in his fears that these new theories would throw dis- 
credit upon the myths ? To us, however, does this 
movement among the thinkers of the time indicate an 
immense step toward the truth ? 

Along with the belief in the old gods goes in Aris- 
tophanes a belief in the pleasures of sense. When he 
criticises Euripides for his idealism, does he really mean 
his morality ? Does he not himself prove the realism 
of Euripides in the remarks he puts into the mouth of 
Euripides ? (Lines 2 1 1 4-2 1 40. ) 

Does Aristophanes show that he misunderstands 
Euripides because he cannot imagine a religious atti- 
tude that is not based on a belief in the reality of the 
ancient gods ? — and because his moral ideals were 
ahead of those which Aristophanes' gods inculcated ? 
(Lines 2 140-2 15 2.) 

In his outbreak (lines 21 52-2189) does he make 
the artistic criticism that only some subjects are fitted 
for poetry, while Euripides is inclined to include all 
things; and the social criticism, that slaves and women 
are necessarily inferior beings to men ? (For the 
treatment of women by Euripides, see ** The Ideals 
of Womanhood held by Browning and the Greek 
Dramatists," Poet-lore^ Vol. IX., pp. 385-400.) 

In his beautiful words about the spell under which 
the true poet works, does Aristophanes seem to con- 
tradict his own aims in poetry as before described ? 
Is there any such contradiction in his own work, 
which Browning has thus subtly worked into the 



GREEK NATIONAL LIFE 579 

portrayal of his personality ? Murray says : ** His 
most characteristic quality, perhaps, is his combina- 
tion of the wildest and broadest farce on the one 
hand, with the most exquisite lyric beauty on the 
other." 

In giving the opinion of Hellas, does Aristophanes 
show that Euripides had a certain popularity in spite 
of his failure to take the prize very often ? This is 
borne out by history, is it not ? Was his popularity 
greater out of Athens than in it ? (See Introduc- 
tion to Vol. II. of Way's ** Euripides in English 
Verse.") 

What reasons does he give for choosing Comedy 
instead of Tragedy } And how does he make this an 
occasion for another dig at Euripides ? 

What were Satyr plays ? and what was the custom 
in regard to them .? (See Chapter on Drama in 
Murray's *♦ Ancient Greek Literature.") 

After pointing out how he has succeeded in cor- 
recting the abuses of the times with his Comedy, how 
does he declare Comedy accomplishes these good 
results,? Is there some truth in his conclusion that 
the ignorant will be more impressed with invectives 
hurled against an enemy than with arguments ^ Is 
his reason for making fun of Bacchos consistent with 
his reasons for making fun of Lamachos or Euripides } 
He makes fun of Bacchos in order to show how 
entirely that god is superior to his own portrayal of 
him, while he makes fun of Lamachos, the general, 
in order to show how bad war is, and of Euripides 
in order to show how bad his artistic, moral, and 
religious principles are. 

Does it look very much as if, as he went on, he 
became so fond of slander for its own sake that he 



580 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

dared anything in that line, and had to invent fresh 
arguments for its usefulness as a moral implement ? 
Does a reading of the plays of Aristophanes bear this 
out? 

In the opening of her reply to Aristophanes, does 
Balaustion exhibit a blending of courtesy and sarcasm 
calculated to flatter Aristophanes, and at the same 
time show him how little his arguments have con- 
vinced her ? 

The first point she makes against him is that 
Comedy did not arise with freedom ; the second, that 
Aristophanes, by his own showing, has improved upon 
it so that he may be considered the inventor ojf it, 
and therefore cannot claim ancient authority. Are 
these good points, and are they supported by the 
historical facts in the case ? His methods being 
proved new, what point does she make against the 
newness of his aims for reform ? 

After sketching briefly his methods for carrying out 
his reforms, in order to assure herself that she has 
not misunderstood him, she proceeds to show that 
none of the reforms he talks about have been accom- 
plished, and why does she declare they fail ? 

In her attack upon his way of showing the advan- 
tages of peace over war, she makes her point against 
the sort of pleasures Aristophanes praises as belonging 
to peace. Would there be anything against Aristoph- 
anes' method of showing the advantages of peace 
if he presented high ideals of the happiness growing 
out of peace ? 

Does Balaustion seem to distinguish here between 
his principle, which is good, and his manner of carrying 
it out, which is bad ? 

Is she not entirely right in her conclusion that 



GREEK NATIONAL LIFE 581 

whatever power there may be in invective is weak- 
ened by carrying invective to the point of lying, and 
that in doing this Aristophanes has degenerated from, 
instead of improving upon, the old Comedy ? 

Finally, she shows that he not only depends upon 
lies for making his hits against his enemies, but that 
he lies about what he himself intends to do, — in fact 
that his whole fabric of Comedy rests upon lies, and 
therefore it cannot succeed as a reforming influence, 
such an influence being possible only to truth. 

Is this conclusion of hers justified by the inconsis- 
tencies in the argument of Aristophanes as Browning 
presents it ? Could it be supported by a study of the 
plays in relation to the remarks made in the various 
Parabases of the plays ? 

Having shown that every statement he has made 
is false, she finally declares that he has not used his 
powers in inventing anything really new, for all that 
he has done has been done by his contemporaries in 
Comedy before him. Is this also borne out by hints 
from the literary history of the time ? 

In her attack upon him has Balaustion cleverly 
picked out his most vulnerable spot, — his lack of 
sincerity and truthfulness, — and by not attacking his 
fundamental theories has she implied that it was not 
worth while to attack the theories of a man so insin- 
cere that he would invent a new one to suit every 
occasion ? Such theories might, abstractly speaking, 
have truth in them, but as presented by Aristophanes 
they were worthless. 

Does Balaustion also show her cleverness in not 
attempting to prove that Euripides has done any good 
to his age, and her inborn conviction that his influence 
in the long run must be for good in considering that 



582 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

the best defence of Euripides will be found in one of 
his own plays ? 

The translation of the **Herakles" following is 
related to the subject only upon the question of its 
value as a translation. For those whose knowledge 
of Greek is insufficient to decide this matter for them- 
selves, a comparison may be made with the literal 
translation in the Bohn Edition and Arthur S. Way's 
poetical translation in ** Euripides in English Verse." 
Mr. Way says that, unhappily for succeeding trans- 
lators, the * Madness of Herakles ' has already been 
given by Browning to English readers. 

It is evident, is it not, that this play of Euripides 
softens and impresses Aristophanes, whose defence of 
himself takes a humbler tack, though it draws a dis- 
tinction between himself and Euripides which is not 
warranted exactly by the facts ? 

Is the exit of Aristophanes thoroughly character- 
istic in its throwing off of any serious impressions 
and his confident putting of himself at the top 
again ? 

Does Balaustion show at the end that she had some 
comprehension of the fact that Aristophanes was not 
quite as bad as she thought him, since it might be that 
he had not conceived of any ideals better than those he 
defended ? 

In the closing scenes has Browning again com- 
bined history with imagination in a way that makes 
the fall of Athens a living reality to us ? 

In the consideration of these two poems as criticisms 
of Euripides and Aristophanes, it should be remembered 
that Browning, if not the first, was among the first to 
re-instate Euripides, who had been deeply appreciated 
by the great minds following him both among the 



GREEK NATIONAL LIFE 583 

ancients and in medieval times, but who had been the 
subject for a hundred years of utterly unappreciative 
criticism at the hands of the dry-as-dust Classicists, 
and that now a recognition of his true worth is grow- 
ing in every direction. (Mahaffy, Jebb, Murray, and 
Way may be consulted upon this point.) 

Of Browning's Greek work there remains only the 
translation of ** Agamemnon " and the fragment ** O 
Love! Love." Many have said of the '* Agamemnon" 
that it is more difficult to read than the very difficult 
Greek. This difficulty grows out of the attempt to 
reflect the ruggedness of the Greek style, which 
Browning avowed was his purpose. 

Mrs. Orr says, in her " Life and Letters" : ** Mr. 
Browning's deep feeling for the humanities of Greek 
literature, and his almost passionate love for language, 
contrasted strongly with his refusal to regard even the 
first of Greek writers as models of hterary style. The 
pretensions raised for them on this ground were incon- 
ceivable to him ; and his translation of the * Agamem- 
non,' pubHshed 1877, was partly made, I am con- 
vinced, for the pleasure of exposing these claims and of 
rebuking them." 

In spite of the difficulties, which are not insur- 
mountable, is it not a satisfaction to have so master- 
ful a reflection of the characteristics of the Greek ? 
(This translation may be compared with Potter's and 
Plumptre's.) 

Is the lyric translated from Euripides for Mahaffy 
beyond criticism, so exquisitely beautiful is the same ? 
(Besides the articles already mentioned, interesting 
opinions and suggestions may be gathered from these 
papers in the published volume of the Boston Brown- 
ing Society Papers : . ** The Classical Element in 



584 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Browning's Poetry," by William Cranston Lawton ; 
** The Greek Spirit in Shelley and Browning," by 
Vida D. Scudder ; ** Homer and Browning," by Pren- 
tiss Cummings. In the London Browning Society 
Papers : " On Aristophanes' Apology," by J. B. Bury, 
Part VIII.) 



Autobiographical Poems 

Topic for Papery Cinssworky or Private Study. — 
Glimpses of Browning Himself. 

Page 

Vol. Text Note 

** Development " xii 252 378 

The Digression in ** Sordello," Book III., lines 

593-1022 ii 173 329 

"Waring" iv 193 390 

" The Guardian Angel " iv 127 380 

*' Women and Roses " iv 122 380 

"One Word More" v 93 299 

"May and Death" V215313 

Third Speaker in Epilogue to " Dramatis Personae " v 276 317 

Parts of Book I. and XII., " The Ring and the f vi i 325 

Book" \ vii 329 361 

End of " Balaustion's Adventure " . . . . vii 88 299 

Prologue to " Fifine " ix 69 288 

" Pacchiarotto " (closing stanzas) . . . , ix 171 294 

Epilogue to " Pacchiarotto " ix 266 307 

"La Saisiaz " xi 70 294 

Prologue to "Jocoseria" xi 166 311 

" Never the Time and the Place " . . . . xi 285 337 

"Pambo" xi 286 337 

Epilogue to " Ferishtah's Fancies " .... xii 61 319 

"To Edward Fitzgerald" xii 280 383 

"Why I am a Liberal " xii 279 383 

Epilogue to " Asolando " xii 267 380 

General Suggestions. — The story Browning tells, in 
** Development," of the slow degrees by which the 
growing boy becomes aware of what a great people's 
literary masterpieces really mean, is an image of devel- 



586 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

opment in the general life of all mankind, and of the 
gradual attainment unto a closer and closer apprehen- 
sion of truth through the dreams and fancies of 
immaturity. (For a concise account of Homeric facts 
and criticism, see Murray's ** Ancient Greek Litera- 
ture," Chap. I.) But it has an obvious autobio- 
graphical interest also, and gives the earhest glimpse 
Brov^ning affords us of his own boyhood. 

His father, Robert Browning the elder, was, in 
fact, " a scholar and knew Greek," and not in a per- 
functory way, but familiarly. He knew by heart the 
first book of the *' Iliad," as a schoolboy, and it 
** was one of his amusements at school," says Mrs. 
Orr, in her "Life and Letters" of the son, *' to 
organize Homeric combats among the boys, in which 
the fighting was carried on in the manner of the 
Greeks and Trojans, and he and his friend Kenyon 
would arm themselves with swords and shields, and 
hack at each other lustily, exciting themselves to battle 
by insulting speeches derived from the Homeric text." 
It is said of him that he used to soothe the poet to 
sleep, when a child, by humming to him an ode of 
Anacreon. This story of the game he contrived of 
the Siege of Troy, through which the budding poet 
of five years learned ** who was who and what was 
what " in the famous tale of the Iliad, is apparently 
what actually took place. It is a picture of judi- 
ciously helpful and friendly relations between father 
and son, inspiring enough in this particular instance, 
but exemplifying an ideal parenthood throughout hfe, 
in many more such ways, of which this poem may be 
taken as a memorial. 

The son said of the father, upon his death in his 
eighty-fifth year, a characteristic word, casting light 



AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL POEMS 587 

upon his own feeling for his wife as well as for his 
father :**... this good, unworldly, kind-hearted, 
religious man, whose powers, natural and acquired, 
would so easily have made him a notable man, had he 
known what vanity or ambition or the love of money 
or social influence meant. As it is, he was known by 
half-a-dozen friends. He was worthy of being Ba's 
father — out of the whole world, only he, so far as 
my experience goes. She loved him — and he said, 
very recently, while gazing at her portrait, that only 
that picture had put into his head that there might 
be such a thing as the worship of the images of 
saints." 

The character of Robert Browning, Senior, might 
be shown to be in itself an explanation of the favorable 
conditions his son enjoyed for his life and work as a 
poet. Information bearing on this may be gleaned 
from Mrs. Orr's account. ("Life and Letters of 
Robert Browning ; " see also '* Letters of Robert Brown- 
ing and Elizabeth Barrett," and **The Letters of 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.") 

In the digression in the third book of " Sordello," 
Browning gives a glimpse of what his ideals were as a 
young poet. In this he directly tells how he had 
pledged his art to serve the cause of the people. He 
confesses that his ardor for all the world's oppressed 
ones had undergone some change. He no longer 
required only the completely good which his first 
dreams for them had pictured. Now he would open 
out all opportunities for them, leaving it for them to 
develop freely their own powers in their own way, 
through evil as well as good. He thus reaffirms but 
the more deeply the original devotion of his art to the 
people, choosing that the race shall be his Muse, and 



588 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

adapting his art, therefore, to suit more inclusive needs 
than those of the nicely selective. 

In the succinct expression of his political views, 
drawn from him by the question, ** Why I am a 
Liberal," many years after this, in 1885, only four 
years before his death, the principle of liberty and 
opportunity for development — for living, loving, 
laboring freely — is the same broadly inclusive one 
upon which he stood at the threshold of his career. 
The dependence of every one for any advance upon 
conditions that are favorable, as well as upon Hberty, 
is here also distinctly stated; ** fortune" must "set 
free bodv and soul " to pursue the purpose *' God 
traced for both." It seems, therefore, does it not? 
as if it would be long before Browning's political and 
social creed would grow out of date by being super- 
seded in practical desire for human progress. 

The broad hint of what his personal democratic 
ideals for man found requisite, as given here, and the 
personal ardor for its attainment, expressed in ** Bor- 
dello," may be corroborated by placing in correlation 
with these revelations of himself various subtler hints 
and implications throughout his work (see *' Browning 
as the Poet of Democracy," Oscar L. Triggs, Poet- 
lore, Vol. IV., pp. 481-490, October, 1892, and 
" The Purport of Browning's and Whitman's Democ- 
racy," an editorial article in Poet-lore^ Vol. V., 
pp. 556-566, November, 1895), and also by com- 
parison of passages in the ** Letters" (volumes already 
cited) which show how his sympathies went out, for 
example, to Abd el Kadr, and to strugglers for hberty 
everywhere, in Italy, or in the United States when 
it was a question of freeing the slaves, or in England 
when it was a question of the landlords' corn laws, etc. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL POEMS 589 

The greater number of direct glimpses of his ideas 
and feelings which his work affords the reader come 
out in expressions of personal love. 

In "Waring" his friendship for Alfred Domett 
appears, and in a way which shows how sensitively 
encouraging he deemed it right friends should be to 
the aims and undertakings, literary, artistic, or other- 
wise, of one another. 

In ** The Guardian Angel" a tender warmth of 
heart expresses itself in a desire to bring together, in 
an association with a work of art suggesting cherishing 
and guardian care, his old friend. Domett, and his new- 
won wife. 

** May and Death " is a little tribute of the heart to 
another early friend, his cousin, Charles Silverthorne. 

Later, in the closing lines of** Balaustion's Adven- 
ture," the picture of a friend is spoken of. Sir Frederick 
Leighton's ** Death of Alkestis " (see frontispiece to 
Vol. VIII., Camberwell Browning), in close relation 
with a personal mention of his wife's poem, ** Wine 
of Cyprus," with its lyrical epithet for Euripides. 

In ** One Word More," as in **The Ring and 
the Book," at its opening and its close, direct dedica- 
tion of his heart's supreme homage is publicly and, as 
it were, ceremonially offered to his wife. 

Besides these unmistakable addresses to her, there is 
a chain of personal lyricism almost continuously pres- 
ent throughout his prologues and epilogues. These 
are so perfectly suited to the temper of the devotion, 
elsewhere more manifestly shown, that, veiled as they 
are in a reserved beauty that blends with the work 
they accompany, it may readily be argued that it is 
right to place them with the other lyrics more frankly 
dedicated to her. The clews, scattered here and there. 



590 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

which the various volumes of*' Letters " supply, may be 
adduced to reinforce the claim that the Prologue and 
Epilogue to " Fifine," to *' Jocoseria ' ("Wanting 
is What" and "Never the Time and the Place"), 
and the Epilogue to ** Ferishtah's Fancies" are all 
spiritual expressions of personal devotion to the " Lyric 
Love ' ' of his life, although so couched generally as to 
fit in with the special subject and temper of the poems 
they introduce or follow. The Prologue and Epi- 
logue to **Fifine," for example, in their relation both 
to Mrs. Browning and to the poem, may be shown to 
be an open secret to the sympathetic reader, and the 
similar appropriateness of the other prologues here cited 
to their theme and to this personal relationship may be 
traced in the same way. It may be claimed, in short, 
that the lyrist in her constantly educed the lyrist in him. 

The perpetuity of the poet's exalted emotional loy- 
alty towards Elizabeth Barrett Browning, during the 
almost thirty years elapsing between her death in the 
summer of 1861 and his own in December, 1889, is 
finally exemplified in the heat of his indignation against 
Mr. Edward Fitzgerald. In lines that were almost 
his last, he was stirred to resent, on the day he first 
learned of it, that a man whom his wife had never 
seen had thanked God that she was dead. 

** Women and Roses," at first sight, it may seem, 
has little claim to be placed with the chain of lyrical 
outbursts associated with his companion poet. The 
unusual praise of women of all time, past, present, and 
to come, which is the motive of this lyric, as praise 
flowing from his knowledge and love of one woman, 
by whom all that all other women could be was inter- 
preted and revealed, and through whom, therefore, 
they all make but indirectly their appeal to him, consti- 



AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL POEMS 59I 

tute it a lyric of homage so eminent that to leave this out 
would be to ignore the captain jewel in the carcanet. 

Internal evidence of this lyric being based on a special 
personal feeling need not be alone depended upon. The 
fact recorded by Mrs. Orr (see ** Life and Letters") 
that the poem was suggested by some flowers sent to 
his wife further warrants the placing of it here as an 
autobiographical glimpse. 

What Browning's own personal ideas of religion 
were has been confidently outlined and dissertated upon 
often, without much caution to discriminate dramatic 
from purely subjective expression. Upon what mo- 
bile, many-faceted evidence most of these confident 
deductions rest, may be perceived when all his poems 
upon religion are set in order and relation one to 
another. Aside from ** Christmas Day" (see pro- 
gramme *' The Evolution of Religion " for special 
study of this poem), there is no directly personal 
expression as to religion in relation to revealed Chris- 
tianity which is not uttered through some dramatic 
mask and placed in relation to a background of its 
own as belonging to a special phase of development, 
except in the case of the Third Speaker in the Epi- 
logue to ** Dramatis Personam " and in ** La Saisiaz." 
In both of these the attitude held may be shown to be 
that of one who waives authoritative assurance of the 
relation of God to the soul, and who finds it rationally 
and emotionally sufficient to accept assurance felt indi- 
vidually. His last personal expression in <* Reverie" 
of his speculative religious philosophy parts altogether 
with authority, and accords with " La Saisiaz " and the 
Third Speaker, and justifies this general conclusion while 
attaining to an expression transcending in serenity both 
of these earlier expressions. 



592 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Not until late in life, and after much ignoring, 
did Browning betray himself personally in relation 
to the censure of critics. When the general public 
was showing unmistakable signs of awakening to a 
perception of his poetic power, and certain superficial 
writers, as if alarmed at the consequences, if such 
originality won the day despite them, renewed attack 
with an animosity and assumption of authority as 
defenders of Art peculiarly hard to bear, — since what 
he had written was never undesigned, whatever else 
it might be, — he then broke out upon such crit- 
icasters, particularly on Alfred Austin, with a half- 
gleeful big giant's fierceness, in "Pacchiarotto," at the 
pygmy duplicity of their high concern for Art. (See 
Notes on this poem, Camberwell Brow7ii?igy Vol. IX., 
p. 296.) In " Pambo " he asserted his steadfast 
attempt to hold to his aim and look to his expression 
of it. Having done both his life long, he accounted it 
fair to conclude that his defects were defects of his 
quality. ** People accuse me of not taking pains ! 
I take nothing but pains!" Mrs. Orr writes that she 
heard him say. And in the Epilogue to " Pacchia- 
rotto," also, questioning the devotion his critical public 
pretended to the antique poets, since it contents itself 
with but five or six of Shakespeare's forty works, and 
with mere "drips and drops " from Milton's four great 
poems, he reminds them that the sweetness and music 
they profess to adore in the elder poets is the result of a 
quality that inures to art as to wine, from time's effect. 
The history of originality in genius, he imphes, goes 
to show that art, like wine, which endures time's test, 
is poured in " stark strength," and mellowed by age. 
If he himself has grudged nothing of might in the juice 
he has poured and leaves to the future's verdict, he has 



AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL POEMS 593 

no reason to be troubled over the result beforehand, least 
of all to be disturbed as to these critics' manifesdy in- 
sincere devotion to those classics upon which they pro- 
fess to base their condemnation. 

Finally, in the Epilogue to ** Asolando" he says a 
word for himself as one who never faltered in any 
of these his devotions, whether of love, of social and 
religious faith, of art, but in his especial place, from 
the line of advance, where he was placed, pressed 
steadily onward. 

Queries for Discussion. — Is it fair to Browning to 
affirm that he expresses his personal opinions through 
his characters ? 

Would considering that he does so be to attribute to 
him far more circumscribed and precise views of life 
and thought than could be made to agree with the 
large general principles, or the specifically individual 
standpoints which his certainly autobiographical poems 
do reveal to be his ? 

What should you conclude was the fundamental 
principle alike underlying all his manifestly subjective 
expressions: (i) as to Society, in general, which he 
would have as free to develop as he himself has been ; 
(2) as to Faith, which he would have every man feel 
as cheeringly as he himself has felt it ; (3) as to Love 
and Friendship, as necessarily personal, and which 
were to him inspiriting and continuing ? Is the fun- 
damental principle underlying all his subjective ex- 
pressions the independent worth and validity of each 
individual soul ? 

If so, is this principle inconsistent with the use of 
his own characters to give expression, not to their rela- 
tive points of view, but to his own as absolute ? 

Is the only expression through his characters of his 



594 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

own way of thinking, which would be natural for a 
man holding the view he does of himself, as shown in 
his autobiographical poems, an expression of the rela- 
tion of each character to its own special environment, 
nature, and development, as he has artistically con- 
ceived these to be in each case ? 

Is it characteristic of Browning, judging from the 
few poems he has written which do reveal himself 
directly, to alter, disguise, and cast side lights upon 
whatsoever material of any sort he does make use of 
which is peculiar to himself, or in any way private 
and personal ? (E. g., the references to Landor and 
Euphrasia at end of Book III., ** Sordello " — see 
Notes on same in Camberzuell Browning — or the 
prologue and epilogues, mentioned, which are bhndly 
dedicated to Mrs. Browning.) 



Browning's Philosophy 

Page 

Vol. Text Note 

'* Ferishtah's Fancies " xii i 305 

" Parleyings with Certain People of Importance 

in their Day " xii 64 3 1 9 

" Pisgah Sights " ix 203 299 

*' Fears and Scruples " ix 206 299 

*'Rephan" xii 256 379 

"Reverie" xii 260 380 

*' Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day " .... iv 286 399 

Epilogue to " Dramatis Personae " .... v 276 317 

"LaSaisiaz" xi 70 294 

I. Topic for Paper i Classwork, or Private Study. — 
The Thought Side of Brownmg's Philosophy. 

General Suggestio?ts. — In considering Browning' s 
philosophy it will be interesting to observe, first, what 
his attitude is to the great doctrine of the nineteenth 
century, namely. Evolution. Three passages in par- 
ticular may be instanced as illustrating directly this doc- 
trine : one in " Paracelsus " (Vol. I., p. 35, Part V., 
lines 642-883); in *' Bernard de Mandeville " (Vol. 
XII., p. 79, stanzas ix., x., xi. ) ; in '* Francis Furini " 
(Vol. XII., p. 120, stanzas ix., x.). In each case 
the doctrine of development is influenced by the 
speaker's way of looking at it. In the first it is God's 
love which unfolds this stupendous drama of develop- 
ment and continues it in the realm of mind and spirit 
ever toward his own perfection. In the second the 



596 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

sun is the moving power in calling forth the life of 
earth ; in the third the search for the cause ends in 
ignorance. Again, in the first the belief that the 
moving power is God's love is wholly intuitional, in 
keeping with the personality of Paracelsus. In the 
second the idea is presented in a thoroughly scientific 
manner, — the sun actually being the stimulator of 
life in all its various stages ; but if we look at the 
passage more closely, we shall see that the speaker 
uses the sun and its action as a symbol of divine force, 
which, by the help of Prometheus, is revealed to man 
as love through his own human experiences of blessed- 
ness. (See Introduction, Vol. XII., Camberwell 
Brozvnifig.) The result is the same as in the previous 
passage, but it is reached by reasoning instead of being 
merely stated. In the third is presented the purely 
scientific method of seeking the cause of phenomena, 
which, it is acknowledged by all thinkers, ends in 
ignorance ; and the speaker accepts this, as far as it 
goes, but adds that it may be supplemented by human 
consciousness, which realizes itself to be the result of 
a cause, and through its manifestations in human pas- 
sions gets a glimmer of the nature of that cause. 

Browning's whole work will be found to be per- 
meated with the doctrines of development and progress 
and the correlative doctrine, relativity, exemplified in 
failure, intellectual, moral, artistic. 

It is impossible to point out all the passages in 
which this doctrine is illustrated, but among the most 
striking are the following: in ** Sordello " (Vol. 
II., p. 93, Book v., lines 98-233), which gives a 
vision of historical development or social ideals from 
the time of Charlemagne to Sordello ; **Cleon'* 
(Vol. v., p. 80, lines 60-151), showing intellectual 



BROWNING'S PHILOSOPHY 597 

development (lines 189—220), showing the develop- 
ment from beast to man ; *' Rabbi Ben Ezra " (Vol. 
v., p. 175, stanzas xii., xiii., xiv., xv.), which illus- 
trates the development from youth to age ; *' A 
Death in the Desert" (Vol. V., p. 183, lines 424- 
447 and 453-473), which illustrates the develop- 
ment of religious conceptions ; ** Fifine at the Fair" 
(Vol. IX., p. 68i,hnes 1885-2047 and 2160-2199), 
which illustrates the fact that all human expressions, 
whether in art, morals, or religion, develop toward 
the truth, though never giving complete expression to 
it; "The Sun" (Vol. XII., p. 14, lines 18-62), 
which illustrates symbolically the development of the 
religious conception of a cause to be worshipped from 
something palpable to the impalpable, inconceivable ; 
"Charles Avison " (Vol. XII., p. 1 54, lines 322- 
381), which illustrates the thought that underneath 
all changes truth persists, and that every expression 
has its permanent value as a revealer of the truth. 

The doctrine of evolution is also illustrated in the 
poet's work by the fact that in his portrayals of 
national life he has chosen periods and figures which 
emphasize steps in the progress of civilization and 
sometimes degeneration (also a phenomenon of evolu- 
tion). It comes out in his art poems and his music 
poems ; and in his innumerable short sketches of 
men and women, character is seen at crucial moments, 
taking it forwards and sometimes backwards, and 
finally the whole range of his men and women illus- 
trate higher and lower stages of soul development. 

From the poet's scientific attitude to his metaphysi- 
cal atdtude is an easy transition. The latter has 
already been indicated in many of the passages cited. 
The basis of his religious belief he finds in human 



598 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

consciousness as manifested in feeling rather than in 
thought or knowledge. On the side of feeling, he 
believes mankind realizes more completely its kinship 
with the divine force that moves the world. This 
world-force he calls Love, which in humanity becomes 
an aspiration toward an ultimate ideal of perfection. 
This aspiration shows itself in many ways, from an 
attitude of gratefulness for gifts received to a recogni- 
tion of the divine element in human love, both in its 
romantic and its social phases. The proof that love 
is more directly revealed than knowledge lies in the 
fact that intellectual effort, be it exerted never so 
strenuously, is unable to attain any knowledge of the 
underlying cause of things. In the failure which 
always meets it, however, there is ever the assurance 
that absolute knowledge is yet to reach, and there- 
fore that it exists though the human intellect cannot 
grasp it. On the other hand, the exaltation that 
comes of love and aspiration is something actually 
experienced and therefore known. 

Along with the idea of aspiration goes its shadow, 
failure of attainment, and so evil is born. The ques- 
tion as to the origin and the use of evil frequently 
occupies Browning. God being manifest in Love, 
then evil must be permitted by him for some good 
end. As we fail to attain absolute knowledge, so we 
fail to attain absolute good. One of the offices of evil, 
then, is to assure us that good is yet to attain and so 
keep spurring us on to try and attain it. Another 
office of evil, as manifested in pain, is to give rise to 
the beautiful virtues of pity and sympathy and endur- 
ance. Another is that if evil had not existed we 
should not have been able to appreciate good, — that 
is, that the two ideas are relative to each other, and 



BROWNING'S PHILOSOPHY 599 

without one we could not have the other. It must 
be asked here, however, if evil is so productive of 
good, why should any one work against it ? and the 
poet's reply is that evil exists for the purpose of 
developing the soul by means of the strenuous efforts 
it must make to overcome the evil. 

The most complete presentation of this phase in 
the poet's philosophy will be found in the following 
poems: in *«A Pillar at Sebzevar " (Vol. XII., p. 
41), which emphasizes the worth of love over 
knowledge; ** Cherries" (Vol. XII., p. 34), em- 
phasizing the worth of love in the humble form of 
thanks for the pleasure derived from eating cher- 
ries ; *' Plot Culture" (Vol. XII., p. 315), em- 
phasizing the worth of emotional love ; *' Mihrab 
Shah " (Vol. XII., p. 20), showing how pain in the 
world is a necessary element for the development of 
Love; ** A Bean-Stripe : also, Apple- Eadng " (Vol. 
XII., p. 46, line 290 to the end), illustrating the 
point that God is known through the mystery of feeling 
which seeks the cause of this feeling in grateful ac- 
knowledgment. Other passages to be noted are in 
** Bernard de Mandeville " (lines 1-131), which 
declares that out of the effort to overcome evil results 
good, therefore we should not wish our lives to be 
utterly untouched by evil. In '* Francis Furini " 
(Vol. XII., p. 120), the need of evil in order that 
good may be recognized is dwelt upon (lines 410— 

These same thoughts are illustrated again in a 
series of speculative lyrics, written from time to 
time; namely, " Pisgah Sights" (Vol. IX., p. 203, 
No. I. and II. ) shows how evil and good seem 
reconciled in life to one who is just dying ; ** Fears 



6oo BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

and Scruples" (Vol. IX., p. 206) reasons that 
God must be love because man loves ; ** Rephan " 
(Vol. XII., p. 256) proves the need of evil as a 
spur to effort; '* Reverie " (Vol. XII., p. 380) 
argues that the nature of God in its ultimate essence 
must be Love. 

Another slight transition brings us to the more 
purely religious aspects of his thought, including his 
attitude toward the religious doctrines of the past, his 
own conception of God, and his attitude toward God 
and immortality. 

A study of his religious poems reveals the fact that 
he considers Christianity to be peculiarly the religion of 
love, and that as such it is the highest religious concep- 
tion attained by humanity. But it also reveals the 
fact that he does not interpret it hterally to himself, 
but as a symbol of the sort of revelation he believes in 
as possible to every human being. He believes, as 
we have already seen, under the passages cited on 
evolution, that religious conceptions evolve, and that 
each conception holds the inner truth for humanity, 
though the outward form of it may grow intellectually 
insufficient as knowledge increases. But • this drop- 
ping away of an old form must not be regarded for 
one moment as affecting the central, eternal truth of 
religion and the good growing out of it as eternal. 

While he reasons that Love is the most essential 
element of the divine nature, his conception of God 
includes the attribute of Power, as we see in the poem 
** Reverie," already cited. The atdtude to be held 
toward the Infinite should be religious and human 
rather than philosophical, because the philosophical 
attitude is likely to paralyze the human will. For 
example, while the philosophical attitude gives us a 



BROWNINGS PHILOSOPHY 6oi 

large conception of God as permitting evil for a good 
purpose, the human attitude is to follow its inborn 
impulse to overcome evil, and realize that its attempts 
to explain evil are, after all, only human. His attitude 
toward immortality is a stanch belief in it, though he 
confesses he has no indubitable proof to offer for it. 
Simply he believes in God and the soul, and in his 
own consciousness liv^es the assurance that the soul is 
immortal. Only so can the Love of God be recon- 
ciled in his mind with the evil and failure in this 
world. 

Finally, he insists that his religious conceptions are 
those which make the truth of religion clear to him, 
but he does not attempt to force them upon any one 
else, for others may only be able to see the truth in 
another way. The poems which illustrate these ideas 
most clearly are the following : In ** Christmas Eve" 
(Vol. IV., p. 286) we find expressed his belief that all 
religions have their centre of truth, and that his is for 
himself alone, and in Hnes 271-375 his conception 
of the nature of God is given. The Epilogue to 
** Dramatis Personae " (Vol. V., p. 276) emphasizes 
the fact that Browning's own standpoint is not reached 
through the authority of a special historical revelation, 
but through that of an individual revelation in his own 
heart. This is also shown in '* Easter-Day " (Vol. 
IV., p. 327). The speaker (probably the poet) 
asks himself the question as to the worth of the his- 
torical story of the redempdon to him. He answers 
in a vision that shows its spiritual worth to him as an 
ideal that could only have been suggested by divine 
Love manifesting itself in the heart of man, but as 
a historical actuality it seems he could not accept it 
without doubt. (See lines loio to end.) 



6o2 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

*'The Sun" (Vol. XII. , p. 14) points out that 
the human conception of God must have an element 
of the Infinite in it. Compare with *'The Pope" 
(Vol. VII., p. 163, lines 1841-1881). 

Poems illustrating the poet's attitude toward God 
are ** The Melon-Seller" (Vol. XII., p. 4), 
which inculcates the doctrine that reverses are to 
be accepted cheerfully as being more one's due than 
good. "The Family" (Vol. XII., p. 11) teaches 
that man should not try to ape God's wisdom, but 
should, when he sees anything that seems to him wrong, 
pray God to change it. In other words, it is an 
argument against adopting the fatalistic attitude of 
accepting without resistance whatever evil befalls instead 
of trying to remove it. 

The chief poem on Immortality is ** La Saisiaz " 
(Vol. XI., p, 70 ; see special digest of this in Notes). 
Abt Vogler (Vol. V., p. 169) also looks forward to 
a heaven where the broken arcs of earth will be com- 
pleted. Paracelsus (Vol. I., p. 35) sees a flying 
point of bliss remote where pleasure climbs its heights 
forever and forever (Part V., lines 640-651). In 
*' One Word More" (Vol. V., p. 93) the poet 
speaks of attaining other heights in other lives, and in 
**01d Pictures in Florence" (Vol. IV., p. 52) he 
expresses desire for rest rather than attainment in the 
future life (see stanzas xxi. and xxii.). 

Queries for Discussion. — Do the passages bearing 
upon Evolution cited show that we always hear 
Browning speaking through his characters ? 

Has not Evolution been an idea prevalent in the 
world for so long a time in diiFerent forms that 
it would naturally find expression through many 
minds ? 



BROWNING'S PHILOSOPHY 603 

Does the personality of the speakers in all cases 
modify the idea ? 

Are there any passages where we feel sure we have 
the poet's own opinion ? 

Browning's acceptance of the doctrine of Evolution 
is generally acknowledged, possibly because it has been 
wellnigh universally accepted, so that no partisans have 
any desire to claim him as opposed to it. No doubt 
such a partisan could make an argument if he wished 
to do so. It is otherwise, however, with his religious 
and philosophical attitude. He has been claimed by 
many to be a Christian in the most orthodox sense. 
An able discussion upon him from this point of view 
may be found in Miss Vida D. Scudder's ** Life of 
the Spirit in Modern English Poets." He has also 
been criticised for basing his philosophy upon the 
revelation of feeling instead of upon the higher reason. 
This is discussed by Henry Jones in his ** Browning 
as a Religious and Philosophical Teacher." Other 
articles which take a view more or less in harmony 
with the facts as indicated in this study are in the "■ Lon- 
don Browning Society Papers" — *' Browning's Phi- 
losophy," by John Bury in Part IIL ; ** The Religious 
Teaching of Browning," by Miss Dorothea Beale, 
Part in.; "Some Prominent Points in Browning's 
Teaching," by W. A. Raleigh, Part V. ; "Browning's 
Theism," by Josiah Royce, '* Boston Browning 
Society Papers." The Introduction to this work 
and the Introduction to Vol. XII. of the Camber- 
well Br ozv fling should be consulted also for further 
hints. 

Whatever you may decide for yourself is his attitude 
toward Christianity in its historical aspect, may it not 
be said that his religious attitude preserves the spirit of 



6o4 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Christianity which is love to God and man, and that 
in the face of all the doubts and the pessimism let loose 
upon this century through the non-comprehension of 
science and the despair at evil, he inspires an 
unbounded trust in his own Pippa's words, — 

" God 's in his heaven, — 

All 's right with the world " ? 

II. Topic for Paper, Classwork, or Private Study. 
— The Practical Side of Browning's Philosophy. 

General Suggestions. — When we come to con- 
sider the bearing of Browning's philosophy upon 
individual action, we find that he believes every in- 
dividual should have an ideal, and that the human 
will should be exercised in choosing a path in life 
which will lead towards the accomplishment of that 
ideal. No matter if failure results, the will should 
never falter and faith never be lost. So important does 
he consider the will, that it appears to him preferable 
that a human being should exercise the will in the 
following out of a bad path, rather than stagnate 
through inability to choose any path at all. 

As to the direction in which choice should go, he 
declares that one ought to be true to his own nature. 
He even finds a glimmer of hope for the criminal on 
the ground that he has been working out the truth of 
his nature, for example, in the case of Guido, who 
Pompilia thinks may have been acting according to 
the truth of his nature, and for whom there may be 
healing in God's shadow. He possibly thinks, with 
Ixion, that sin is the result of the darkening of the soul 
by the meshes of sense. At any rate, he does not 
believe in eternal punishment, arguing that sin brings 
its own punishment along with it in this life. Further- 



BROWNING'S PHILOSOPHY 605 

more, he does not presume to decide what is right 
and what is wrong for anybody but himself. 

The most exalted human manifestation to him is 
love which is unselfish and constant in its devotion. A 
sin against love is a sin against the highest truth of 
which the nature is capable. 

A natural result of his insistence upon the worth of 
the individual is his social attitude, which is liberal and 
democratic. 

Illustrations of these points may be found in " Francis 
Furini ".(Vol. XII., p. 120), in which stress is laid 
upon man's part to fight the evils he sees, God's 
plan being that evil, though meant for good, should 
seem wrong to man, in order that he should have the 
moral spur of needing to overcome it ; in the Pope in 
"The Ring and the Book" (Vol. VII., p. 163), 
whose conclusion is that *Mife's business is just the terri- 
ble choice " (see line 1233). In ** The Two Poets of 
Croisic" (Vol. X., p. 230) the paralysis of the will 
growing out of a vision from an infinite point of view 
is objected to ; the same thought is touched upon in 
*' An Epistle " (Vol. V., p. 10). Paralysis of the will 
was the sin in " The Statue and the Bust " (Vol. IV., 
p. 265). In ''The Eagle" (Vol. XII., p. 3) it 
is pointed out that man's will should lead him to live 
in the midst of the world of men doing good. In *' A 
Camel-Driver" (Vol. XII., p. 26) the argument is 
that though eternal punishment would be unjust, 
mankind should punish the evil-doer, because punish- 
ment is a means of teaching ; in other words, it is 
man's will fighting against evil. 

In ''Two Camels" (Vol. XII., p. 30) it is 
claimed that in order to do one's work in the world 
of increasing its happiness, one must h?iozv happiness, 



6o6 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

therefore it is not well to renounce joy, for one's own 
sake, but to cultivate it for the sake of others. In **A 
Bean-Stripe : also, Apple-Eating" (Vol. XII., p; 46) 
the difficulty of deciding what is evil and what is not 
evil is emphasized, and the lesson taught that only what 
comes home direcdy to one as evil should be striven 
against (see lines 243-245). 

*' When cold from over-mounts spikes through and through 
Blood, bone and marrow of Ferishtah, — then, 
Time to look out for shelter." 

About the evils of the world which he cannot 
reach, Ferishtah thinks it better not to worry, but 
leave them in God's hands, and dwell upon the fact 
of the good in the world which sheds a light over the 
black of evil, so that life is on the whole gray, that is, 
nearer white than black. 

Miranda, in ** Red-Cotton Night-cap Country," is 
an example of weakness of will, on account of which 
the poet thought him a failure (see programme on 
this poem.) Clara, on the other hand, he considers 
more of a success, because she lived out her nature to 
the best of her ability. Sordello (Vol. II., p. 93) 
is an example of the struggle of the will with refer- 
ence to personal morality and social good. 

Illustrations of the reverence due to love are so 
numerous that it will be possible to point out only a 
few of the instances. Taking the characters in the 
longer poems, Paracelsus was undone because he 
did not recognize the worth of love in man's estate; 
Strafford's motive of action was love for the king, while 
in Pym personal love and love for a great principle 
were at war, and Pym chose the higher ideal ; the 
guiding principle in the life of Charles was love for 



BROWNINGS PHILOSOPHY 607 

his father Victor ; Valence and Norbert reverence 
love as the great truth of existence, and not to respond 
to it and be true to it would be to cast a shadow upon 
God's own light. The speaker in the little poem 
"Cristina" feels love to be a revelation. The 
Duchess in **The Flight of the Duchess" could not 
live without the regenerating influence of love. 
Andrea del Sarto feels love to be the great truth of his 
life in spite of the faithlessness of the beloved. 
Caponsacchi and Pompilia felt love to be a revelation 
from above. Browning dubs the lady in *' Daniel 
Bartoli " (Vol. XII., p. 89) a saint, because she 
reverences love by making the only choice consistent 
with the preservation of its honor. 

In '« Why I am a Liberal" (Vol. XII., p. 279) 
the poet's democracy comes out in his belief that 
every one should have freedom to *' live, love and labor 
freely." In the digression in *'Sordello " (Vol. II., 
p. 93) his liberal opinions find direct expression (see 
programme on this poem and on autobiographical 
poems) ; also in ** Charles Avison " (Vol. XII., p. i 54, 
stanzas xiv. and xvi.). "The Lost Leader " (Vol. 
IV., p. 41) also illustrates his liberal position. Indirectly 
it may be seen in his treatment of historical subjects, as in 
** Strafford " (see programme on this poem) ; in Luigi's 
part in " Pippa Passes" (Vol. I., p. 177) ; in King 
Victor's fear of the democratic tendencies ot his son 
in *' King Victor and King Charles" (lines 310-319 
of Part I., Second Year, Vol. I., p. 237) ; in 
Berthold's fear of the growth of democracy in 
** Colombe's Birthday " (lines 22-45 of Act V., 
Vol. III., p. 122) ; in Chiappino, in "A Soul's 
Tragedy," whose soul's tragedy was his failure to 
live out the democratic ideal of liberty which he pro- 
fessed (Vol. III., p. 257). 



6o8 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Although, in accordance with Browning's moral 
attitude toward life, every one should strive for the at- 
tainment of an ideal, if that ideal is not attained in life, it 
is not to be considered a cause of regret, but an evidence 
of the fact that another life exists in which attainment 
may be realized. Thus, Rabbi Ben Ezra is thankful for 
what he aspired to be and was not (Vol. V.,p. 169, 
lines 38-41); Abt Vogler declares our failure here to 
be a triumph's evidence for the fulness of the days 
(Vol. III., p. 169, lines 81-82). Optimism in the 
face of failure is illustrated symbolically in **Childe 
Roland" (Vol. IV., p. 277), and directly in the 
Epilogue to "Asolando" (Vol. XII., p. 267). 

Queries for Investigation a?id Discussion. — Do you 
find Browning's moral attitude to be entirely in har- 
mony with his philosophical and religious attitude .'' 

In basing his religious faith upon the direct revela- 
tion of human aspiration in mankind, and his moral 
faith upon the power of will to achieve ideals, has 
Browning successfully rebutted the pessimism of the 
nineteenth century which has followed upon the scien- 
tific demolition of some of the old grounds of belief? 

Does he successfully meet the difficulty he evidently 
feels in attributing the origin of evil to the Omniscient 
Power of the universe, — that difficulty being the 
danger that -such a belief may tend to fatalism and the 
stagnation of the will ? 

If good and evil are equally the creation of an 
Omniscient Power, it may be asked why should man- 
kind will to follow one more than the other ? to which 
might it be answered, that the belief in the superiority 
of goodness over evil has been a constantly present 
aspiration of the human mind, and since an Omniscient 
Power has created both evil and good, is it not reason- 



BROWNING'S PHILOSOPHY 609 

able to suppose that he is also the implanter of a belief 
that good is better than evil ? Is this, literally speak- 
ing, the answer Browning gives ? 

Whether his grounds for the basis of moral action 
be considered sufficient or not, in his own personal 
conviction of the necessity for following a high moral 
ideal — that is, loyalty to truth — is he not one of the 
greatest, perhaps the greatest, moral power in nine- 
teenth-century literature ? 

III. Topic for Paper ^ Classworky or Private Study. 
— The Esthetic side of Browning's Philosophy. 

Queries for hivestigation and Discussion. — How 
are Browning's ideas oi aspiration, truth to reahty, 
relativity of attainment, the worth of the human soul 
as the starting-point of life, and the need of will-power 
illustrated in his expressions on art ? 

For aspiration in art, as necessary for its highest 
development, see "Andrea del Sarto " (Vol. V., 
p. 36), **Abt Vogler" (Vol. V., p. 169). For rela- 
tivity of attainment, see '* Old Pictures in Florence " 
(Vol. IV., p. 52), *' Charles Avison " (Vol. XII., 
p. 154). (See also studies of these poems in the 
programmes ** Music and Musicians," " Art and the 
Artist.") For the worth of the human soul as 
revealed in the human body, see ** Fra Lippo Lippi " 
(Vol. v., p. 24), ''Francis Furini " (Vol. XII., 
p. 120), and '*The Lady and the Painter" (Vol. 
XII., p. 221), For truth to actuality in art, see 
"Gerard de Lairesse " (Vol. XII., p. 140). For 
the exercise of the will in artistic creation, see the 
passage in " Pauline " (Vol. I., p. i, lines 268—280). 
" Sordello " (Vol. II., p. 93) shows the struggle 
of the will for artistic mastery, and in " Christopher 
Smart" (Vol. XII., p. toi) the place of the will 
39 



6lo BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

in shaping artistic inspiration toward worthy ends is 
indicated. 

Does Browning's own worlc further exemplify the 
harmony between his aesthetic standpoint and his phi- 
losophy in his persistent treatment of the struggles and 
aspirations of the human soul, and in his portrayal of 
souls, both evil and humble, indicating his belief in the 
intrinsic worth of all souls and their fitness for artistic 
treatment ? 



Browning's Artistry 

I. Topic for Paper y Classzvork, or Private Study. — 
The Metrical Factors of Browning's Style. 

General Suggestions. — In studying Browning's 
verse-form it will be found most profitable and con- 
venient not to begin quite at random, but to attempt 
an examination, for example, of rhyme and rhythm — 
as the two main factors of metrical effect — in a few 
representative poems belonging to several different 
classes. Scrutiny may be directed upon poems offer- 
ing general resemblances in metre but decided differ- 
ences in mood, and belonging to work of various dates, 
early and late. Such a selection might include, for 
instance, as a specimen line of investigation, the couplet- 
rhymed pentameter of serious narrative used in ** Sor- 
dello," and the same measure, somewhat differently 
manipulated, in **The Parleying with Bernard de 
Mandeville ; " the purely lyrical rhymed verse of 
** You '11 Love Me Yet," one of the early lyrics, in 
" Pippa Passes," and " Round Us the Wild Creatures," 
one of the latest lyrics, in ** Ferishtah's Fancies ; " 
the unrhymed blank verse of such a drama as **The 
Return of the Druses," of the colloquial dramatic 
monologues *' Fra Lippo," ** Bishop Blougram," and 
"A Forgiveness," a later work, and the musing mono- 
logues, better called soliloquies, of *' Caliban " and 
the Pope, in '*The Ring and the Book;" the 
rhymed verse, six-stressed, used in the lyrical *' Abt 



6i2 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Vogler," in the dramatic idyl **Mu]eykeh" and in 
the jocose ** Solomon and Balkis ; " or, again, the 
three-stressed rhymed verse of two personal poems 
of such contrasting temper as '* Pacchiarotto " and 
** Reverie." 

It might be supposed, since Browning's art has been 
often decidedly condemned, that observation of its char- 
acteristic traits had been made which warranted such 
condemnation ; but this is not the case. Adverse gen- 
eralizations have been common, but special observation 
is rare, and there is comparatively little help prepared 
for the earnest student of poetic principles and effects. 
The foregoing programmes offer some suggestions, 
especially those of the first series, where more detailed 
study was attempted, and the Introductions to the 
Camberwell Brozvni?ig. (See, also, articles before 
cited on Browning's Form and Rhyme, in Poet-lore^ 
Vol. II., pp. 234, 300, 480 ; Vol. v., pp. 258, 
436 ; on ** The Reasonable Rhythm of some of Mr. 
Browning's Poems," in '* London Browning Society 
Papers," Part VIII., Vol. II.) 

The ** Introduction to Browning" of Mr. Arthur 
Symons is the only one among the various Browning 
handbooks that considers metrical artistic effects. 
Prof. Hiram Corson's *' Primer of English Verse " 
should be consulted for its passages on Browning, and, 
if procurable, Mr. Arthur Beatty's thesis on " Brown- 
ing's Verse Form." (Gummere's " Handbook of 
Poetics" and Brewer's '' Orthometry " may be used 
as reference-books on the general subject of metrical 
art.) 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — Is it 
evident, from the frequency with which Browning 
uses unrhymed verse for dramatic, and rhymed verse 



BROWNING'S ARTISTRY 613 

for lyrical effects, that he does so designedly ? In his 
later work is it obvious that his long-practised skill with 
rhyme and irregular rhythm enables him to attain easy 
colloquial and dramatic effects with rhyme also ? 

Does classified observation of his use of free rhythm 
(similar to that called by the Greeks pedestrian-metre, 
partaking of the flexibility of prose, and marked in Eng- 
lish by stress, and by the intercalation at will of one or 
more weak syllables) reveal carelessness or adroit adap- 
tation to the general impression he sought to awaken ? 

What does the fact of his use of a measure super- 
ficially the same in poems essentially different in effect 
argue as to his metrical proficiency ? — that his ear for 
verse-music was rough and crude, and his feeling for 
melody simple, or that his ear was extraordinarily sen- 
sitive, and led him to vary and shade each instrument 
of mere melody which a given metre could supply 
him, so as to unfold from it complex and unusual 
harmonies ? 

Does the evidence his work provides show that he 
lacked the mastery requisite to manipulate his form at 
pleasure, so that it should subserve his design and take 
color from his mood, instead of getting the upper hand 
of him ? Refer to specific poems, with this question 
in mind, and discuss it in the light of the evidence 
they aff-ord. 

Are Browning's bad rhymes numerous and without 
any excuse for their oddity except the necessity of get- 
ting a rhyme ? Or are his rhymes generally good, un- 
commonly various and rich, his bad rhymes infrequent ? 

Are the greater number of his rhymes unnoticeable, 
because blent in the verse-flow so perfectly ? 

When his rhymes are obtrusive, odd, or forced, are 
they oftener than not dramadcally justifiable ? That 



6l4 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

is, are they accounted for, either on the score of the 
strong sense-emphasis, the spirited declamation of the 
speaker who is the mouthpiece of the poem, the whim- 
sical or sportive nature of the piece, or the abrupt blurt- 
ing sort of talk habitual to the character, or suitable at 
the time to the frame of mind presented? 

For example, in "The Grammarian's Funeral" 
(Vol. IV., p. 248, lines 98 and 100), where there is 
a forced rhyme, is there a special sense-emphasis on 
''far" and on **bad," due to the opposition between 
things of near and remote profit to the soul and between 
the conception of what is good and bad, which makes 
** far gain" and ** bargain" mate more perfectly? 
And does the spirited partisanship of the speaker for the 
Grammarian, who practical people would say had no 
** common sense," further tend to humor this rhyme ? 

What evidence of design to suit the whimsical hu- 
mor of the piece do the obtrusive rhymes of ** Pacchia- 
rotto" (Vol. IX., p. 171) afford? 

Do the odd rhymes of ** The Flight of the Duchess " 
(Vol. IV., p. 219) exemplify design again, because 
they suit the character and the manner of the hunts- 
man who is relieving his mind by confiding the story 
to the ear of a friend with whom he feels familiar ? 
In this poem, also, does the change in the quality of 
the rhymes as well as the rhythm, in lines 567-688 
corroborate the inference that the poet designedly 
made his rhymes subject to oddity during the direct 
talk of the huntsman, and here subject to the charm 
exercised by the gypsy ? 

Does Browning's work elsewhere often indicate that 
this sort of modelling of his rhymes and rhythm, so that 
they betray the impress of character and habit or of 
sudden emotion, is intentional ? 



BROWNING'S ARTISTRY 615 

II. Topic for Papery Classwork, or Private Study. 
— The Element of Language and Symbol. 

General Suggestio/is. — The preceding programmes 
under the topics considering the art of the poems therein 
included may be referred to ; also the General Intro- 
duction to this volume, and Introductions to the Cam- 
berwell Broiv7iing throughout, for remarks bearing on 
this topic ; elsewhere, for this and the two following 
divisions of the present programme, there is little to 
consult that gives the student hints Hkely to be of as- 
sistance. A valuable general study of Browning's 
diction, on the philological rather than the poetic 
side, by Mr. O. F. Emerson, will be found in Mod- 
ern Language Notes (April, 1889, briefly quoted in 
Poet-lore, Vol. I., pp. 291-292, June, 1889) ; and 
an interesting paper on <*The Nature Element in 
Browning's Poetry," by Mrs. E. E. Marean, gives 
suggestions on imagery drawn from Nature ("Boston 
Browning Society Papers," pp. 471—487). 

Observation of the diction and the similes and meta- 
phors used in the range of work, early and late, before 
suggested as affording a line of investigation upon char- 
acteristics of rhyme and rhythm, may be followed here 
to advantage, or any of the groups of poems cited in 
the foregoing programmes may be taken up. 

Study, for example, of ** Bishop Blougram " 
(Vol. v., p. 49), an early monologue (1855), 
would bring out the contemporaneous quality of the 
English ; the range taken by the allusions, and that those 
most prominent were to Shakespeare, for instance, upon 
whom, by the way. Cardinal Wiseman wrote ; the 
unexalted, unimpassioned, yet clever and clear similes, 
as those to the sea- voyage and the outfit requisite for a 
cabin, or those to the traveller passing through different 
zones of climates and the clothes he would need. 



6l6 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Study, again, of a later monologue, '' A Forgive- 
ness " (1876), would reveal the absence of peculi- 
arity in the language, on the whole ; the Spanish 
allusions ; the fact that the prominent imagery of the 
poem related to the ** arms of Eastern workmanship,'* 
about which the refined cruelty of the speaker's fancy 
apparently loved to play (Vol. IX., p. 227, lines 
248-277), and to the comparison of men of violent 
passions to bulls (292—301). 

The wealth, variety, and oddity of the imagery in 
" Sordello," and the degree in which it was adapted 
to the subject of the moment, — as **the thunder 
phrase" of-^schylus echoing like ** a sword's grid- 
ing screech braying" a shield, or the ''starry pala- 
din" Sidney's ** silver speech" ** turning intense as 
a trumpet sounding in the knights to tilt" (Vol. II., 
p. 93, lines 65 fol.), — if representatively brought 
forward, could be compared with the imagery sug- 
gested by the subject of the Parleying with Bernard de 
Mandeville in one of Browning's latest poems (Vol. 
XII., p. 279), wherein the main images are appropri- 
ately related to the sun. (See **Sun Symbolism in 
Browning," Poet-lore ^ Vol. XL, pp. 55-73, January, 

It will be interesting, in general, in examining the 
subject of imagery in Browning, to notice whether the 
metaphors are drawn from the cosmic or out-door 
nature side of life or the human nature side ; whether 
they apply to the poem fractionally, that is, merely to 
passages in the poem, or whether they apply to it as a 
whole, that is, to the entire theme. In the latter case 
they belong more properly to symbolism than to meta- 
phor, and are often less evident, but certainly not less 
poetic or skilful. 



BROWNING'S ARTISTRY 617 

Among the dramatic romances, for example, which 
have an element of the narrative and often ot the 
lyrical, also, although expressed through a dramatic 
personality, there is one, ** The Patriot" (Vol. IV., 
p. 142), whose imagery, if studied, would be seen to 
be drawn from the human side of life, and to belong 
especially to the passage where it appears, although 
also suited to the general theme. The roses and 
myrtle, of which the patriot speaks in the opening 
verses, are said to be mixed in his path *' like mad,''' a 
graphic way both of putting before the eye the flowery 
confusion, and of reminding himself of the frenzy of 
excitement over him which the crowds had when they 
strewed his pathway, by the comparison of the look 
of the heaped intermixture of roses and myrtle with 
the human quality. So, again, the house-roofs are 
described as if they were alive themselves, and not 
merely crowded on top and at windows with onlookers, 
they seem to '* heave and szuay,'"' etc. The sixth hne, 
in the same way, carries a metaphor — *' the air broke 
into a mist with bells" — which suggests not only 
the vibrations which actually make the atmosphere 
quiver with vagueness, like that of a mist, but also 
the human sense-impression which the repeated con- 
cussion of merry bells produces. 

Another one of these brief dramatic romances may 
be cited, again, to show that study of its imagery 
would reveal very little of the direct sort of metaphor 
or simile, and that what imagery may here be observed 
is of the symbohc kind. It is not the graphic variety 
of symbolism, either, throwing light on the thought, 
like the rainbow in " Ixion," but the impressionistic 
variety, influencing the mood, as the symbolism of 
** Childe Roland " does, and thus making the reader 



6i8 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

aware of the feelings the speaker is outpouring and of 
their larger significance with reference to the general 
drift of the poem. The first stanza of ** Time's 
Revenges" (Vol. IV., p. 1 68), as a whole, through the 
impression it gives of the speaker's fame, which has 
brought him through his books, on the spiritual side 
of him therefore, the devotion of an unknown friend, 
illustrates by analogy and contrast his frame of mind 
toward a frivolous lady. She appeals to him on the 
sensual side, and arouses in him an obsession that 
makes him eager to sacrifice fame, with all it could 
mean or promise, to her utter recklessness of him. 
The two sides of this position, displaying his effective 
fame and ineffective love, illustrate figuratively the 
relativities time fosters, and symbolize, as a whole, in 
this humanistic, dramatic way, very much the same 
theme as another little poem, " Earth's Immortalities " 
(Vol. IV., p. 28), presented there in the opposite 
way, /. ^., lyrically and pictorially. 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion. — Does 
Browning generally adapt his diction and allusions to 
tone in with the character, the time, and general 
effect he means to present ? As, for example, in 
** Guido " in ** The Ring and the Book" he uses 
Elizabethanisms and brutally frank descriptive terms ; in 
"Ned Bratts " provincial obsolete English suiting 
Bunyan's time. 

Is the censure of his style due in some degree to 
unusual allusions and epithets which constitute the 
means whereby he gives his pictures of historic life 
their color and local background t Do such character- 
istics of design in diction convict his work of a diflficulty 
that shows wilful obscurity, or of a careful artistry that 
will repay study .'' 



BROWNINGS ARTISTRY 619 

Is his use of imagery so varied, by his adaptation of 
it to suit his various characters, that some of his work 
will either be bare of metaphor, because it would not 
be in character for the personality depicted to use it, 
or employ little that is intrinsically rich or in any way 
inappropriate to the mood and habits of thought he is 
indulging, or else rise only occasionally to a lyrical or 
picturesque climax under stress of sudden emotion or a 
poetic memory ? As, for example, in '* Prince Hohen- 
stiel " figures are used that are prosaic and practical for 
the most part, but when France and Italy are con- 
sidered in a way likely to evoke the Prince's enthusiasm 
or memories of an adventurous youth, the style rises 
into lyrical beauty. 

How is it when the character is poetic, as in the 
poet of ** Pauline," of ** Sordello," *'At the Mer- 
maid " ? What evidence is there of successive mental 
attitudes more or less disposed alternately to graphic 
description, to reasoning, to emotional expression in 
passages where the poet is speaking in his own person, 
as in ** La Saisiaz " and the digression in the third 
book of "Sordello" ? 

Are any of Browning's poems allegories in the same 
way that Bunyan's ** Pilgrim's Progress" is, or that 
Spenser's ** Faerie Queene " is ? 

What is the difference between allegory and sym- 
bolism r And how does Browning's work illustrate 
any difference ? 

Does the poet's work supply proof that his imagery, 
on account of its adaptability to his characters, and 
also on account of its allusional and symbolistic quali- 
ties, is richer, more varied and complex than is, at 
first, obvious, when the same simple use of imagery is 
looked for which less original or less dramatic modern 
poets employ ? 



620 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

Does Browning show a lack of ability to invent 
striking imagery of the sort that is only incidentally 
ornamental, applicable to a fractional part of his poem, 
or to a sudden picture occurring in the midst of a pas- 
sage ? For example, such touches as '* The wroth sea- 
waves edged with foam, white as the bitten lips of 
hate," **The herded pines commune and have 
deep thoughts" (** Paracelsus ") ; ** Was it speech 
half-asleep or song half-awake " ? ** A ridge of short, 
sharp broken hills like an old lion's cheek-teeth" 
('*The Flight of the Duchess ") ; «* The sprinkled 
isles, lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea, and laugh 
their pride when the light wave lisps * Greece * " 
( " Cleon " ) ; ' * The finger of God, a flash of the will 
that can " (" Abt Vogler ") ; ** Pouring Heaven into 
this shut house of life" ( ** Transcendentalism ") ; 
** Tb learn not only by a comet's rush, but a rose's 
birth, — not by the grandeur, God, — but the com- 
fort, Christ" (** The Ring and the Book") ; " Pro- 
found purple of noon oppression, light wile o' the 
west wind" (**Jochanan Hakkadosh ") ; *' Morn 
is breaking there. The granite ridge pricks through the 
mist, turns gold as wrong turns right. O laughters 
manifold of ocean's ripple at dull earth's despair ! " 
(''Parleyings : Gerard de Lairesse " ) ; ** Under be- 
friending trees, when shy buds venture out," ** Amid 
whirl and roar of the elemental flame which star-flecks 
heaven's dark floor " (** Reverie "). 

Are such passages unusual and peculiar to the early 
poems, or are they, like these examples, scattered 
throughout the whole range of Browning's work .? 

Does scientific imagery play an important part in 
Browning's poetry ? Is it correctly used ? Is it often 
transformed to suit his own purposes ? For examples. 



BROWNING'S ARTISTRY 621 

note the metaphor of the polarization of light in the 
** angled spar" in "My Star;" ** Once I saw a 
chemist take a pinch of powder," in the lyric in *' Fe- 
rishtah's Fancies " ; the image of the light rays of 
the color spectrum in ** Numpholeptos," etc. 

Is Browning's imagery largely drawn from the cos- 
mic, out-door side of life, or is it mainly derived from 
the human side ? 

III. Topic for Paper, Classworky or Private Study. 
— Artistic Theme and Mood. 

Ge7ieral Suggestions. — The General Introduction 
of the present volume classifies Browning's subject- 
matter; and the first paper in the series of ** Annals of 
a Quiet Browning Club," on "Choice of Subject- 
Matter in Poets," considers characteristics of Brown- 
ing's subject-matter in comparison with Chaucer's, 
Spenser's, and Tennyson's : *' Chaucer and Spenser 
are prototypes of two poetical tendencies that have 
gone on developing side by side in English literature : 
Chaucer, democratic, interested supremely in the per- 
sonalities of men and women, representing the real, 
and Spenser, aristocratic, interested in imaging forth an 
ideal of manhood . . . Chaucer drawing his lessons 
out of the real actions of humanity, Spenser framing 
his story so that it will illustrate the moral he wishes 
to inculcate ... In the present era Tennyson and 
Browning have represented, broadly speaking, these 
two tendencies . . . Even hurried survey of the field 
reveals the fact that Browning's range of choice in 
subject-matter is infinitely wider and his method of 
developing it far more varied than that of any other 
Enghsh poet. 

" He seems the first to have completely shaken 
himself free of the trammels of classic and medieval 



622 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

literature. There are no echoes of Arthur and his 
knights in his poetry, the shadows of the Greek gods 
and goddesses exert no spell. When he deals with a 
classic subject ... he does it with a critical conscious- 
ness of the fitness of the subject for his special end at 
the time ... In fine, the whole range of thought 
and emotion is, truly speaking, the raw material of 
Browning's subject-matter." {Poet-lore yNo\. VII., pp. 
356-366 ; see also discussion thereon, pp. 436-446.) 

The fashioning of the subject-matter from a special 
standpoint so as to diffuse over it an atmosphere of 
humor is illustrated by one of the " Garden Fan- 
cies," whose very title forebodes a prank of some kind, 
*'Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis (Vol. IV., p. 13). 
The subject-matter is nothing more than the burial 
of a pedantic book, but the creative standpoint, so to 
speak, from whence the theme is fashioned is shown 
in the attitude toward the tiresome pedant and in 
the gleefulness of getting the better of him, and this 
is more truly the subject of the poem than the incident 
of the burial is. As Elizabeth Barrett said of it, it 
has " quite the damp smell of funguses and the sense 
of creeping things through and through it." Yet all 
this is incidental to the humorous mood. The final 
stroke of rescuing the book from the growing pains of 
being stabbed through with a fungus at chapter six, 
and replacing it on a shelf with less lively compan- 
ions, to **^r)'-rot at ease," is the climax of irony at the 
pedant's expense. 

Is the humorous temper toward his subject often 
evident in Browning's work .?' What different aspects 
of this enjoying-from-the-outside point of view come 
out, for example, in '* How it Strikes a Contempo- 
rary," ** Confessions," *' Pacchiarotto " } 



BROWNING'S ARTISTRY 623 

Is** Up at a Villa — Down in the City" (Vol. 
IV., p. 44) the better or worse, as a character-sketch 
of an Italian's genuine feeling toward the banalities of 
rusticity and the cheering bustle of town-life, because 
of the jocular air the poet has suffused over the talk ? 
How is this accomplished ? Although as the story- 
teller he does not appear, is he not present, making us 
laugh with him ? 

A peculiarly odd and grim humor is imparted, simi- 
larly, in ** The Heretic's Tragedy " (Vol. IV., p. 
253). An atmosphere of burlesque surrounds it, al- 
though it recounts a veritable historic scene of the 
fourteenth century in Paris, and puts it pictorially be- 
fore the eye in all its barbarous religious ferocity. But 
is either its historic or its pictorial quality the main 
thing in the poem ? The note prefixed by the poet 
shows that it is not as an account of the burning of 
Jacques du Molay and an incident of the dissensions 
of the Church during the French dominance over the 
papacy, that the poem was conceived, but as a repro- 
duction of a pious version of that event rendered in 
canticle-form to be sung at festivals in Flanders, some 
two centuries afterwards. It illustrates, then, not the 
French historic event, but an artistic rendering in com- 
memoration of it marked by religious fiawete and the 
quaint, stiff loyalty belonging to Flemish art, and sound- 
ing the same note in literary form which is familiar to 
most of us in the pictures of Memling, and others of 
the early church painters. Aside from the light the 
poet's prefatory hint sheds upon his design, is it not 
evident, in the poem, that not direct narration or pic- 
turesqueness is aimed at, but the indirect presentation 
of an event become traditional, conventionally artistic, 
and almost hallowed through the partisanship of zeal- 



624 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

ous and credulous minds ? Do not the inconsistencies 
to the modern eye, of burning a man for the heresy of 
holding that God was good and merciful, in order 
to re-estabHsh the contrary "infinitudes" of God's 
justice and menace, come out more humorously for the 
indirect structure of the poem ? Does not the grotesque 
art of the canticle — through its refrains having a double 
meaning, and its figures of the burning martyr offered 
as a rose of hell to the rose of Sharon, conveying both 
the sardonic absurdity it all is to modern thought and 
the palpable, much-relished hit it all was to the medi- 
aeval mind — have everything to do with giving the 
piece its peculiar atmosphere of humor ? 

Is this double-edged quality, through which any 
objective event is set in the light of contrasting human 
moods or points of view, the secret of Browning's 
sympathetic humor ? 

IV. Topic for Paper, Classworky or Private Study. 
— Design and Harmony. 

Queries for Investigation and Discussion, — The 
treatment of ** The Ring and the Book," the dramas, 
the larger poems, ** The Inn Album," ** Sordello," 
etc., as to motive and artistic effect, in this volume and 
in the Ctf;w,^^r^6'^// Introductions, will assist in pointing 
out with reference to these works what is meant by 
harmonizing all the parts of a play or poem to accord 
with its main motive; when the component parts of a 
work are manipulated constantly and consistently from 
beginning to end to suit a synthetic idea, all the 
lesser matters of poetic workmanship, rhyme, rhythm, 
diction, imagery, even subject-matter, also sink into 
this general trend, while contributing each a due share 
toward the mutual harmony. 

Are Browning's design and harmony very often so 



BROWNINGS ARTISTRY 625 

inclusive of smaller effects that are frequently in other 
poets ends in themselves, that his work is censured for 
traits that assume special meaning and beauty when 
they are understood as appropriately subordinated to 
the general plan ? 

Is this subordination of the various constituents of 
a poem to an inclusive design characteristic of all 
Browning's larger works ? 

Does it distinguish many of his shorter poems, as 
**Childe Roland," ''Development," "Imperante 
Augusto natus est," and many other of the poems 
typical of special periods of historic life ? 

Is the social or historic and always evolutionary motive 
which underlies all the details and determines the 
modelling of so many of his poems a new and original 
factor in the creation of poetry, and alone enough to 
signalize Browning's genius ? 

Does this gift of creative design and harmony mani- 
fest itself in his earlier work, and in his later work give 
evidence of falling off, or of deepening in capacity to 
effect its will upon subtler material ? 

In surveying the general scope of his work from 
first to last with reference to artistic power, facihty 
and variety of effectiveness in the dramatic, narrative, 
and lyrical modes characteristic of him, do you find that 
those who consider his later work to be less artistic 
than his first are right, or that tbey exhibit an inability 
to understand what his characteristics as an artist are, 
and a lack of sufficient knowledge of the material they 
pronounce upon ? 

Does observation of the work of Browning on the 

side of his artistry, in all the respects here suggested, 

go to prove him to be an irregular genius crude and 

careless in artistic workmanship, or a genius whose 

40 



626 BROWNING STUDY PROGRAMMES 

originality was exerted equally in shaping varied and 
appropriate artistic outlets for his creative spirit and in 
pouring it forth ? 

Does Browning himself give the sufficient clew to 
the characteristic quality of his subject-matter and the 
art that sets it forth in his Epilogue to *' Pacchiarotto " ? 

*' Mart's thoughts and loves and hates ! 

Earth is my vineyard, these grew there : 
From grape of the ground, I made or marred 
My vintage." 



INDEX 



POEMS IN PROGRAMMES 



Abt Vogler, 1 68, 517, 602, 

608 
Adam, Lilith, and Eve, 43, 102 
Agamemnon of ^schylus, The, 

583 
Album Lines, 188 
Alkestis, 564 
Andrea del Sarto, 102, 136, 

482, 607 
Another Way of Love, 42 
Any Wife to Any Husband, 102 
Apollo and the Fates, 553 
Apparent Failure, 513 
Arcades Ambo, 472 
Aristophanes' Apology, 188, 563 
Artemis Prologizes, 553 
At the "Mermaid," 188 

Bad Dreams, 102 

Balaustion's Adventure, 563, 

585 5 Conclusion, 102 
Bean-Feast, The, 29, 253 
Bean-Stripe, A: also, Apple-Eat- 
ing, 599, 606 5 Lyric to, 188 
Beatrice Signorini, 102, 491 
Ben Karshook's Wisdom, 537 
Bernard de Mandeville, Parley- 

ings with, 595, 599 
Bifurcation, 42 

Bishop Blougram's Apology, 
218, 253, 472,615 



Bishop, The, Orders his Tomb, 

136, 253,482 
Blot in the 'Scutcheon, A, 352, 

47a 
Boy and the Angel, The, 29 
By the Fireside, 102 

Caliban upon Setebos, 218 
Camel- Driver, A, 605 ; Lyric 

to, 82 
Cardinal and the Dog, The, 

29 
Cavalier Tunes, 466 
Cenciaja, 491 
Charles Avison, Parleyings with, 

168, 466, 597, 607 
Cherries, 599 

Childe Roland, 399, 608, 617 
Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day, 

218, 595, 601 
Christopher Smart, Parleyings 

with, 188, 609 
Cleon, 218, 596 
Clive, 466 
Colombe's Birthday, 360, 524, 

607 
Confessional, The, 29, 512 
Confessions, 42 
Count Gismond, 497 
Cristina, 42, 607 
i Cristina and .Vionaldeschi, 42 



628 



INDEX 



Daniel Bartoli, Parleyings 

with, 1 02, 607 
Deaf and Dumb, 136 
Death in the Desert, A, 218, 597 
" De Gustibus," 480, 493 
Development, 585 
Dis Aliter Visum, 42 

Doctor , 537 

Donald, i, 472 

Eagle, The, 605 5 Lyric to, 82 
Earth's Immortalities, 170, 618 
Easter-Day, 218, 595, 60 1 
Echetlos, I, 553 
Edward Fitzgerald, To, 585 
Englishman in Italy, The, 480 
Epilogue (to Asolando), 585, 

608 
Epilogue (to Dramatis Personae), 

585, 595> 601 _ 
Epilogue (to Ferishtah's Fan- 
cies), 82, 585 
Epilogue (to Pacchiarotto), 188, 

Epistle, An, containing the 
Strange Medical Experience of 
Karshish, the Arab Physician, 
218, 605 

Eurydice to Orpheus, 136 

Evelyn Hope, 42 

Face, A, 136 

Family, The, 602 5 Lyric to, 82 
Fears and Scruples, 595, 599 
Ferishtah's Fancies, 595 ; Lyrics 

from, 82 
Fifine at the Fair, 102, 168, 

.513, 597 
Filippo Baldinucci, 537 
Flight of the Duchess, The, 
102, 524, 607, 614 



Flower's Name, The, 42 
P'orgiveness, A, 102, 525, 616 
Founder of the Feast, The, 168 
Fra Lippo Lippi, 136, 482 
Francis Furini, Parleyings with, 

595, 599, 605 
Fust and his Friends, 517 

Garden Fancies, 42 

Gerard de Lairesse, Parleyings 

with, 609 
Glove, The, 42, 188, 497 
Gold Hair, 29, 513 
Goldoni, 188 
Grammarian's Funeral, A, 487, 

614 
Guardian Angel, The, 136, 585 

Halbert and Hob, 472 

Herakles, 582 

Heretic's Tragedy, The, 623 

Herve Riel, i, 497 

Holy- Cross Day, 537 

Home Thoughts ^from Abroad, 

480 
Home Thoughts from the Sea, 

480 
House, 188 
How it Strikes a Contemporary, 

188, 525 
How They Brought the Good 

News, I 

** Imperante Augusto natus 

est ," 549 

In a Balcony, 392, 607 

In a Gondola, 42, 491 

Inapprehensiveness, 43 

In a Year, 42 

Incident of the French Camp, 



INDEX 



62( 



Inn Album, The, 253, 455, 472 

Instans Tyrannus, 549 

In Three Days, 42 

Italian in England, The, 493 

Ivan Ivanovitch, 531 

Ixion, 553, 617 

James Lee's Wife, 102 
Jochanan Hakkadosh, 537 
Johannes Agricola, 517 
Jubilee Memorial Lines, 466 

King Victor and King Charles, 
I02, 332, 493, 606 

Laboratory, The, 42, 497 
Lady and the Painter, The, 136 
La Saisiaz, 585, 595, 602 
Last Ride Together, The, 42 
Life in a Love, 82 
Light Woman, A, 42 
Likeness, A, 42 
Lost Leader, The, 466, 607 
Lost Mistress, The, 42 
Love among the Ruins, 42 
Love in a Life, 82 
Lovers' Quarrel, A, 42 
Luria, 370, 493 

Magical Nature, 82 

Martin Relph, 472 

Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli, 

43 
Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha, 

168, 517 
May and Death, 585 
Meeting at Night, 82 
Melon-Seller, The, 602 j Lyric 

to, 82 
Memorabilia, 188 
Mesmerism, 42 



Misconceptions, 82 

Mihrab Shah, 599 ; Lyric to, 82 

Mr. Sludge, "The Medium," 

410 
Moses the Meek, 537 
Muckle-Mouth Meg, 29 
Muleykeh, i 

My Last Duchess, 102, 491 
My Star, 82, 621 

Names, The, 188 
Nationality in Drinks, 480 
Natural Magic, 82 
Ned Bratts, 472, 618 
Never the Time and the Place, 

82, 585 
Now, 82 
Numpholeptos, 42, 621 

Oh Love ! Love, 583 

Old Pictures in Florence, 136, 

482, 602 
One Way of Love, 42, 82 
One Word More, 585, 602 

Pacchiarotto, 136, 188, 614 
Pambo, 188, 585 
Pan and Luna, 549 
Paracelsus, 188, 263, 517, 595, 

602, 606 
Parleyings with Certain People 

of Importance in their Day, 

595 
Parting at Morning, 82 
Patriot, The, 617 
Pauline, 188, 531 
Pearl, a Girl, A, 82 
Pheidippides, i, 553 
Pictor Ignotus, 136, 482 
Pied Piper of Hamelin, The, 29 
Pietro of Abano, 487 



630 



INDEX 



Pillar at Sebzevar, A, 599 5 

Lyric to, 82 
Pippa Passes, 253, 322, 493; 

Lyrics from, 82 
Pisgah-Sights, 595, 599 
Plot Culture, 599 5 Lyric to, 

82 
Poetics, 82, 188 
Ponte deir Angelo, Venice, 29 
Pope and the Net, The, 29, 

253 
Popularity, 188 
Porphyria' s Lover, 42 
Pretty Woman, A, 42 
Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, 

Saviour of Society, 507 
Prologue (to Fifine at the Fair), 

585 
Prologue ( to Jocoseria ) , 585 
Prologue (to Pacchiarotto), 585 
Prologue (to The Two Poets of 

Croisic), 82 
Prospice, 399 
Protus, 549 

Rabbi Ben Ezra, 218, 537, 

597, 608 
Red Cotton Night-cap Country; 

or. Turf and Tow^ers, 488, 

513, 606 
Rephan, 595, 600 
Respectability, 513 
Return of the Druses, The, 

253, 338 
Reverie, 595, 600 
Ring and the Book, The, 102, 

188, 253, 423, 491, 583, 

602, 605, 607, 618 
Rosny, 43 
Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli, 

42, 497 



St. Martin's Summer, 42 
Saul, 168, 218, 537 
Serenade at the Villa, A, 42 
Shah Abbas, Lyric to, 82 
Shop, 188 
Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis, 

622 
Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, 

525 
Solomon and Balkis, 43, 537 
Song : " Nay but you, who do 

not love her," 82 
Sonnet : " Eyes, calm beside 

thee," 43, 82 
Sordello, 188, 281, 482, 585, 

596, 607, 616 
Soul's Tragedy, A, 253, 384, 

493, 607 
Statue and the Bust, The, 102, 

491, 605 
Strafford, 304, 466, 606 
Summum Bonum, 82 
Sun, The, 597, 602 

Through the Metidja to Abd- 

el-Kadr, i 
Time's Revenges, 618 
Toccata of Galuppi's, A, 168, 

491 
Too Late, 42 
'* Touch him ne'er so lightly," 

188 
*' Transcendentalism : A Poem 

in Twelve Books," 188 
Tray, i 

Twins, The, 29 
Two Camels, 605 ; Lyric to, 82, 

621 
Two in the Campagna, 42 
Two Poets of Croisic, The, 188. 

497, 605 



INDEX 



631 



Up at a Villa — Down in the 
City, 623 

Wanting is — What ? 82 
Waring, 585 
Which ? 43 



Why I am a Liberal, 466, 585, 

607 
Woman's Last Word, A, 42 
Women and Roses, 585 

Youth and Art, 42 



•I' If 



13S 



*= ,^-^ -nt. 



s>" 



^^^ d^ 






^.^ii^*^ .V 






■ */..iL^ • ;V — X. . •:■ .%; • • ■;€. ^ • . 







-^^ .-^ 



V . 



.Oc> 



W^: 



C' 



V '"/.-^"^-^ 






v^ o 4 



















.^y . V 



^.^'\^% ^ 







^, v-^' :^ 



.0 0. 



-^./*,. 







\^ x^^ -% 



// c 



^ 



^ * N \V 



x'^' 




,X^^' '^z^- 



- ^ ^ s ^ v'^ 
.0 o. 







'^^.#' .^ 



; ^.i.:o^^^ .S^ ^ ' ^^f^"M 






L' 







.-^' 



ov- s ^ " ' A 



-^z. Vo ^ ^ 






0^ 



%. v^ 






A -7% - '^^'^^^^r^/ " \0C) 













.. ,^^^ 

s^"-^. 




.^^' 






•^ (1 N 



0^ 



V 



OO^ 




' '"^. V^ 



.-\^^ 




'^Z- * s^ ^ » ^^ cf;^ * Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 

'-vC^ \' -i.^ ^ ^ f^ > Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 



..^^^^. 



* X ^ ^U 

,-0 




Treatment Date: March 2009 



' PreservationTechnologies 

,\V A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 



•> /A 



-? -tp 



<-• ^^^^'^ ^ ^'i^. .\ ' •-'^ ^fe//'///^ -P 



Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



